Counts of Falkenstein: Noble Self-Consciousness in the Twelfth-Century Germany (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society)

TRANSACTIONS

of the

American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge VOLUME 74, Part 6 , 1984

The Counts of

Falkenstein:

Noble Self -Consciousness in

Twelfth-Century Germany

JOHN B. FREED

Professor of History, Illinois State University

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Independence Square, Philadelphia 1984

Copyright O 1984 by The American Philosophical Society

Library of Congress Catalog

Card Number 83-73282

International Standard Book Number 0-87169-746-7

US ISSN 0065-9746

To My Wife

CONTENTS

Page I. KARL SCHMID AND HIS CRITICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Formation of Patrilineal Lineages Georges Duby Karl Leyser Friedrich Prinz Karl Bosl Wilhelm Stormer Patrilineal Lineages and the Investiture Conflict The Codex Falkensteinensis 11. THE ANCESTORS OF COUNT SIBOTO IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Foundation of Weyarn Maternal Ancestors Paternal Ancestors The Marriage of Siboto's Parents Siboto's Other Relatives 111. SIBOTO IV's KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY . . . . . . . . . 33 Siboto's Own Presentation of His Genealogy The Falkensteins' Hanfgemal The Welfs' Knowledge of Their Ancestry Patrilineal Consciousness among the Weyarns and Falkensteins IV. THE PATERFAMILIAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Family Strategies The Modling Inheritance Siboto's Daughters Siboto's Uncle, Nephews, and Niece Maternal and Paternal Uncles The Changing Meaning of Familia V. FIRST NAMES AND SURNAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Legitimate Sons Bastard Sons The Adoption of Surnames The Surnames of Siboto's Ancestors and Relatives Siboto's Surnames The Surnames of Siboto's Sons The Surnames of Siboto's Grandsons VI. THE END OF THE DYNASTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Kuno and Siboto V Siboto VI and Conrad The Disposition of the Falkenstein Inheritance The Causes of the Falkensteins' Decline The Causes of Family Extinction Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

I. KARL SCHMID AND HIS CRITICS The Formation of Patrilineal Lineages

K

arl Schmid has demonstrated that a fundamental change occurred in the structure and self-perception of the German nobility between the ninth and twelfth centuries.' The great amorphous sips of the Carolingian and early Ottonian periods, crystallizing around different magnates in each generation, were gradually replaced by distinct lineages, highly conscious of their patrilineal descent and identified by surnames. While the nobles of the Hohenstaufen era were largely the biological descendants of the Carolingian aristocracy, the nobility's sense of identity had altered in the intervening centuries. The Libri memoriales are Schmid's chief source for the ninth and tenth centuries. These monastic books of remembrance contained the first names of tens of thousands of individuals for whom the monks prayed. By analyzing the handwriting, ink, and the names themselves, Schmid was able to identify two types of groups: clerical prayer fraternities and noble sips. The members of both groups perceived themselves as belonging to a community composed of the living and dead. The sips consisted of individuals, male or female, important or insignificant, who could claim kinship, however remote, with a powerful magnate, lay or clerical, and who were associated with the possession of a particular office. Both paternal and maternal relatives were considered to be kinsmen, and enates could be more important than agnates if they were more distinguished in their ancestry, wealth, and social position. Special emphasis was placed on

' Karl Schmid, "Adel und Reform in Schwaben," in Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung, ed. Josef Fleckenstein, Vortrage und Forschungen 17 (Sigmaringen, 1973), 295-319; idem, "Die Monchsgemeinschaft von Fulda als sozialgeschichtliches Problem," Fruhmittelalterliche Studien: Jahrbuch des Instituts fur Fruhmittelalterforschungder Universitat Munster (FS) 4 (1970): 173-200; idem, "Neue Quellen zum Verstandnis des Adels im 10. Jahrhundert," Zeitschrift fur die Geschichte des Oberrheins (ZGORh) 108 (1960): 185-232; idem, "Religioses und sippengebundenes Gemeinschaftsbewusstsein in friihmittelalterlichen Gedenkbucheintragen," Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters 21 (1965): 18-81; idem, "Uber das Verhgtnis von Person und Gemeinschaft im friiheren Mittelalter," FS 1 (1967): 225-249; idem, "Uber die Stmktur des Adels im friiheren Mittelalter," Jahrbuch fur frankische Landesforschung 19 (1959): 1-23; idem, "Zur Problematik von Familie, Sippe und Geschlecht, Haus und Dynastie beim mittelalterlichen Adel. Vorfragen zum Thema, 'Adel und Hemchaft im Mittelalter,' " ZGORh 105 (1957): 1-62; and Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch, "Die Gemeinschaft der Lebenden und Verstorbenen in Zeugnissen des Mittelalters," FS 1 (1967): 365-405. Schmid's article, "Uber die Struktur," has been translated by Timothy Reuter as "The structure of the nobility in the earlier middle ages," in The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the ruling classes of France and Germany from the sixth to the twelfth century, ed. Timothy Reuter, Europe in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies 14 (Amsterdam, 1979), 37-59.

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

relatives of royal blood since proximity to the royal house, the only real dynasty in the early Middle Ages, raised a sip's status and chances for advancement. In the absence of surnames, first names or components of names (most Germanic names had two parts, for example, Engelbert, Engelschalk, Gotschalk), often the name of the sip's alleged famous or infamous ancestor, identified its members. When the sip lost control of the ecclesiastical or secular office with which it was associated, it disintegrated as the individual members regrouped around different figures. The gain or loss of royal favor was a major factor in this rise and fall of sips. This kaleidoscopic reshuffling of the nobility could easily occur since each individual member of the sip, except for siblings, possessed different sets of paternal and maternal relatives. The attempts by modem scholars and genealogists to identify and label specific sips on the basis of distinctive leading names (Leitnamen), for example, the Alaholfinger or Unrochinger, are, therefore, essentially anachronistic creations since such leading names could easily pass from one group of nobles to another. The existence of such leading names provides evidence for the biological continuity of the nobility, but not for the persistence of the sips, let alone distinct lineages, over long periods of time. Kinship was thus largely conceived of in horizontal rather than vertical terms in the ninth and early tenth centuries; that is, one's relationship to other people within one's own generation, in particular to a powerful magnate, was more important than descent in the agnate line from a particular ancestor. The members of these sips had widely scattered property holdings since both sons and daughters received a share of their parents' inheritance. Property, like the leading names themselves, was easily transferred from one group of nobles to another in a perpetual formation and division of estates. As office-holding tended to become hereditary, however, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, greater emphasis was placed upon agnate descent. This fact is reflected in the increasing use of first names, inherited in the male line, in successive and/or alternate generations, for example, the recurrence of the name Luitpold (Leopold) among the Babenbergs, the margraves and dukes of Austria from 976 to 1246. The holders of such hereditary offices were able to consolidate their possessions in the area where they exercised power, and by the middle of the eleventh century they were beginning to be identified with the centers of their new territorial lordships as was the case with the Habsburgs. Initially, the same man often employed a number of different cognomina to identify himself; but as the nobility's sense of belonging to specific lineages deepened in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such designations became fixed and turned into true surnames. The great magnates were the first to adopt this practice, and the custom gradually crept down the social ladder. The adoption of such hereditary surnames completed the reorganization of noble society into patrilineal dynasties. It is significant that the word familia, which had referred in classical Latin and in the early Middle Ages to those individuals who were subject to the authority of the head of the household, the paterfamilias, acquired its modem meaning around 1100.

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS

3

The foundation of a dynastic monastery (Hauskloster),which often served as the burial place of the family, further stimulated and strengthened this sense of family identity. While nobles had founded monasteries in the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, such houses had not remained for a long time in the possession of the founding family, but had either become royal or episcopal proprietary churches, been assigned as a cell to another monastery, or had ceased to exist altogether. Indeed, the descendants of the founder often bore the chief responsibility for the destruction of the abbey, which had been endowed with property that they would otherwise have inherited. It became customary, however, in the middle of the eleventh century for nobles who founded a house or reformed a decayed one to g v e their foundation to the Holy See, but to retain the hereditary advocacy for themselves and their heirs, usually the eldest member of the lineage in each generation. Such papal proprietary houses did not become a part of the imperial church, but became in actual practice a major component of the noble advocate's temtorial lordship. It is thus not purely coincidental, as Schmid points out, that the reformed monasteries and the new dynasties appeared at the same time.' Religious enthusiasm and/or dynastic selfinterest explain why so many of the reformers among the nobllity supported the pope during the Investiture Confict. Georges Duby Schmid's analysis of the changes in the structure of the German nobility has proven highly influential. Helmut Lippelt argues, for instance, that the chronicle of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009-1018), a major source for the reign of the Emperor Henry 11, is in fact a late version of the Libri memoriales, in which Thietmar remembered his relatives, the members of the Magdeburg cathedral chapter, and his episcopal colleague^.^ More important, Schmid's theory about the formation of patrilineal dynasties has led Georges Duby to revise his own findings about the origins of the nobility in his classic study of the Mkonnais, La sociiti aux X I e et XIIe siecles duns la rigion miconnaise (Paris, 1953).4Duby has admitted that he was "deeply influenced by Marc Bloch's ideas," when he wrote this book.5

Schmid, "Adel und Reform," 302. Helmut Lippelt, Thietmar von Merseburg: Reichsbischof und Chronist, Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 72 (Cologne, 1973), 193-202. Constance B. Bouchard, "The Origins of the French Nobility: A Reassessment," American Historical Review 86 (1981): 504, states: "Schmid has argued convincingly that medieval men only became conscious of membership in a continuing family unit when a direct line of inheritance began in offices and castles; at that point their consciousness became identified with the father-son-grandson line that inherited and held the office in turn." A second edition was published in 1971. All citations are to this edition. Duby has acknowledged his debt to Schmid in several places: The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977), 67-68, 101-103, 150, and 153. See also, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore, 1978), 9-10. Georges Duby, "Lineage, nobihty and kmghthood: The Miconnais in the twelfth centurya revision," The Chivalrous Society, 59.

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

Bloch had contended that the short pedigrees of the noble f a d e s of the high Middle Ages and the imprecise meaning of the word nobilis itself in the early Middle Ages indicated that before the twelfth century Europe had lacked a true nobility, which he defined as a hereditary, legally privileged class.6 Such a class had formed only in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the descendants of the Carolingian imperial aristocracy, wealthy local landowners, and their armed retainers, conscious of their common, chivalric life style, had coalesced, and, threatened by the growing wealth and social aspirations of the burghers and rich peasants, had procured special heredtary privilege^.^ It was this theory that had provided the conceptual framework for Duby's original analysis of the social structure of the Miconnais.' Yet his own evidence never completely supported Bloch's theory about the origins of the European nobility. Duby himself pointed out that the families whom he had classified as knights in the twelfth century were largely the descendants of the wealthy prominent men who had already been described as nobles before 1000.9 He stressed the last point in 1972 in his reexamination of the evidence from the Miconnais." Duby identified 105 laymen who owned property in the 200-square kilometer area around Cluny in the period between 1080 and 1100 and whose descendants were called knights in the twelfth century. These individuals belonged to thirty-four houses, twenty-eight of whom can be traced to six founding families in the tenth century, that is, to Schmid's sips. "The aristocracy of the year 1100 was," Duby wrote, "a society of heirs."" The property of the six founding families had already been divided by the year 1000 among twenty-four families. These families

Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1964), 2: 283. 1 prefer D. A. Bullough's definition of the nobility as a class characteked by "endogamy, commensalism and receipt of deference as well as by their dominating place in the political life of the society of which they formed part" in "Early Medieval Social Groupings: The Terminology of Kinship," Past and Present 45 (1969): 4. There has been considerable controversy in recent years about the origins of the nobility. For further information, see Bouchard, "Origins of the French Nobility," 501-532; and Reuter, T h e Medieval Nobility, 1-14. ' Bloch, Feudal Society, 2: 283-331. Duby, La Socihti aux XI' et xii' sie'cles duns la rigion m2connaise (Paris, 1971) observed that the word nobilis was used in an imprecise manner before the breakdown in comital authority in the late tenth century (116-121); that two new social classes, knights and peasants, had appeared in the eleventh century (191-213); that the same century had seen the beginnings of a revival of trade (263-286); that anyone who possessed the requisite wealth, regardless of birth, could at first become a knight (198); that the knighthood was already closed to outsiders, e.g., manorial officials of servile origin, by the twelfth century (317-336); that the burghers and some peasants had profited from the growth in trade between 1180 and 1250, while the nobility was hurt (361-399); and that by 1250 it was no longer necessary for the son or grandson of a knight to be dubbed in order for him to enjoy the privileges of a nobleman (467-477). Ibid., 317-322. lo Duby, "Lineage, nobility and knighthood," 59-80. Ibid., 67. Bouchard, "Origins of the French Nobility," 527-528, is rather critical of Duby on this point. She argues that the links he established were almost always through a woman and that he has thus really proven that upstarts became the sons-in-law of "noble fathers with a large number of eligible daughters."

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS

5

tried to prevent the further fragmentation of their patrimony, on which their position in society was based, by limiting the inheritance rights of daughters and younger sons. While the younger brothers who did not become clerics or monks received a share of the family property, they rarely married; and if they did, they usually remained childless and their property reverted to the main branch of the family. It is noteworthy that only three younger brothers founded separate lineages after 1000 and that in only eight other families did more than one brother in any generation have child~en.'~ This emphasis on primogeniture and patrilineal descent is reflected in the adoption of surnames-five before 1035, eleven before 1050, fourteen before 1070, and thirty-one before 1100-and a concomitant reduction in the number of different first names as the individual lineages adopted distinctive leading names.13Elsewhere, Duby observed that it was the greatest nobles who first developed such a sense of family identity and a memory of their ancestry-the counts around 900, the castellans around 1000, and the knights around 1050.'4 Duby's debt to Schmid is obvious.15 Karl Leyser Schmid, nevertheless, has not been without his critics. Karl Leyser asks whether Schmid's chief source, the Libri memoriales, may not have led him to overstate the group consciousness of the German nobility in the early Middle Ages. There is, Leyser suggests, a difference between remembering distant kinsmen in prayer and bequeathing property to them. If a man did not have a son, he was more likely, for instance, to found a monastery than to leave his fortune to remote relatives. Noble selfawareness must thus be analyzed in different settings. While Schmid rightly criticized older scholars for concocting gapless family trees, Schmid's own methodology threatens, in Leyser's view, to replace the "excessive certainties of the old school" with "~haos."'~Leyser also points out that frequently castles passed from one family to another. The proliferation of castles after which families were named does not necessarily mean, therefore, that a more stable patrilineal family structure had developed in Germany by the beginning of the twelfth century. To prove that this had in fact occurred, it would be necessary to demonstrate, as Duby did in the

l 2 Duby,

"Lineage, nobility and knighthood," 75. Ibid., 62. "Georges Duby, "The structure of kinship and nobility: Northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries," The Chivalrous Sociefy, 146. In his original study, La sociiti, 215-227, Duby had emphasized the collective rights of the lineage to the patrimony and had merely noted a tendency, espeaally among the castellans, by the end of the eleventh century to give a larger share of the inheritance to the eldest son (226). This is a far cry from what Duby had to say in 1972. l6 Karl Leyser, "The German Aristocracy from the Ninth to the Early Twelfth Century: A Historical and Cultural Sketch," Past and Present 41 (1968): 36. See also Leyser's comments in Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), 50. l3

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case of the MPconnais, that the inheritance rights of the other heirs had been limited. The evidence is ambiguous, Leyser believes, in the case of Germany.17 Friedrich Prinz Friedrich Prinz contends in a survey article about the Bavarian nobility in the high Middle Ages that Schmid overstressed the relative importance of enate versus agnate kinship ties among the nobility prior to the Investiture Conflict and that individual dynasties, aware of their agnate descent, developed sooner in Bavaria than Schmid s u p p o ~ e d . 'Like ~ Leyser, Prinz believes in effect that Schmid was overly influenced by the peculiar nature of his chief source, the Libri memoriales. A number of different sips (8enealogia) were already mentioned by name in the eighth century, for example, the five sips whose members were protected by a double wergild according to the Lex Baiuvariorum, the mid-eighth century codification of Bavarian tribal law.19Since these sips appear to have been agnate affiliated groups,20 Prinz feels that paternal and maternal relatives were at least equally significant. Although proximity to the Carolingians and the possession of an ecclesiastical office were major factors in determining the status of nobles in the first half of the ninth century, Prinz argues that indvidual noble houses which emphasized agnate succession, for example, the Aribonen, started to form already in the second half of the ninth century as the power of the monarchy waned and as offices began to be held by hereditary tenure. It must be pointed out, however, that while Aribo I1 (d. 1104), the deposed count-palatine of Bavaria and the last member of his dynasty, knew, for instance, that he was a descendant of Margrave Aribo (died after 909), who had held a number of counties in the Danube Valley, it has never been possible to establish the genealogical connection between the two men with complete certainty, and the descendants of the margrave split into a number of separate lineages. Aribo I (d. 1000) obtained in fact the Bavarian palatinate through his wife Adala, the daughter of the countpalatine Hartwig I; and one of the allegedly distinctive leading names of the Aribonen, Hartwig, only entered the genealogy through her.21 The Leyser, "German Aristocracy," 50-51. Friedrich Prinz, "Bayems Adel im Hochmittelalter," Zeitschrift fur bayerische Landesgeschichte 30 (1967): 57-59. l 9 Theodore John Rivers, trans., Laws of the Alamans and Bavarians (Philadelphia, 1977), 129. 20 Wilhelm Stormer, Fruher Adel: Studien zur politischen Fiihrungsschichte im FrankischDeutschen Reich vom 8. bis 11. lahrhundert, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 6 (Stuttgart, 1973), 91. 2' For further information, see Heinz Dopsch's unpublished thesis, "Die Aribonen. Ein fuhrendes Adelsgeschlecht in Bayem und Kamten wahrend des Hochmittelalters," Staatspriifungsarbeit am Institut fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung (Vienna, May 1968); and idem, "Der bayerische Adel und die Besetzung des Erzbistums Salzburg im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert," Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fiir Salzburger Landeskunde 110/111 (1970-1971): 125-151. Bouchard, "Origins of the French Nobility," 505-508, has made a number of telling criticisms of the entire attempt to reconstruct genealogies through the use of leading names. l7 IR

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS

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Aribonen thus resemble one of Schmid's sips more than a patrilineal dynasty with a clearly developed sense of its own identity. While the biological continuity between the nobility of Agilolfingian and Carolingian Bavaria and the great noble dynasties of southeastern Germany in later centuries has been established beyond a doubt, Prinz has placed the formation of the individual patrilineal lineages, in my opinion, at too early a date.22 Karl Bosl Karl Bosl implies that the transformation in the structure of the nobility occurred at a later date in Bavaria than in Swabia, the area with which Schmid has been primarily concerned.23Since the king or another member of the royal family held the duchy during most of the eleventh century, Salian Bavaria was in effect a royal province. The leading Bavarian noble families, like the Aribonen, had died out by the beginning of the twelfth century; and the new families who rose to prominence, like the Welfs, owed their rise in large measure to their familial ties to the Salians and/ or royal patronage. The Bavarian nobility and episcopate remained generally loyal to the king during the Investiture Conflict. Only those bishops and nobles who had personal ties to Henry IV's opponents in Swabia and Lorraine, for example, the Swabian-born Archbishop ~ e b h a r dof Salzburg (1060-1088) or Duke Welf I (Welf IV) of Bavaria (1070-1077,1096-1101), supported the pope. It was the Investiture Conflict itself that weakened royal control of Bavaria, and most of the reformed dynastic monasteries, a key indicator of the change in the nobility's self-perception, were established only in the twelfth century, several decades after their foundation in Swabia. A comparison of the Msconnais, Swabia, and Bavaria suggests that regional variations, caused in part by the relative strength or weakness of royal authority, must be considered in analyzing the breakup of the great noble sips and the formation of distinct lineages among the nobility. Wilhelm Stormer Like Prinz and Bosl, Wilhelm Stormer, Bosl's student and Schmid's foremost critic, has relied largely on Bavarian evidence, particularly the nobility's choice of first names and the adoption of surnames, in analyzing Stormer the changes in the structure and self-perception of the aristo~racy.~~ believes that it is erroneous to generalize from Swabian evidence alone

22 See Michael Mitterauer, Karolingische Markgrafen im Siidosten: Frankische Reichsaristokratie und bayerische Stammesadel im osterreichischen Raum, Archiv fur osterreichische Geschichte 123 (Vienna, 1963). 23 Karl Bosl, "Adel, Bistum, Kloster Bayems im Investiturstreit," Festschrift fur Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburststag am 19. September 1971, vol. 2, Veroffentlichungen des MaxPlanck-Instituts fur Geschichte, vol. 36, pt. 2 (Gottingen, 1972): 2: 1121-1146. 24 Stormer, Friiher Adel, 29-117; and idem, "Adel und Ministerialitat im Spiegel der bayerischen Namengebung (bis zum 13. Jahrhundert). Em Beitrag zum Selbstverstandnis der Fiihmngsschichten," Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters 33 (1977): 84-152.

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and that the selection of a name was a deliberate expression of the nobility's self-consciousness.The frequent use of the component Ada1 (noble) in first names is an obvious example. The double wergdd of the five sips listed in the Lex Baiuvariorum indicates that the eighth-century nobles of these sips saw themselves as belonging to a social stratum with special privileges and that these claims were legally recognized. The sip members were as proud of their ancestry as of their kinship to powerful individuals in their own generation as can be seen in their fictitious genealogies, which reached back in the case of the Huosi to the period of the barbarian invasions, and in their choice of names of saga heroes, whom they claimed as their common ancestors. The Carolingians ended the special status of these sips and weakened their sense of identity by gaining control of the proprietary churches and monasteries that had served in the Agilolfingan period as the focal point of the sips' traditions, but the tribal nobility survived thk fall of Duke Tassilo I11 and merged with the Carolingian imperial aristocracy to form the nobility of post-Carolingian Bavaria. The gradual reduction in the number of different first names in the tenth century as the same names were increasingly repeated in successive and/or alternate generations is an indication that the nobles were starting to emphasize agnate descent, but Stormer concedes that the major period in the transformation of the Bavarian nobility was the second half of the eleventh century.25 Contrary to Schmid, Stormer asserts that the Bavarian magnates were not the first to adopt surnames.26They were well known in the area where they lived and exerted their power and, like Elizabeth I1 today, required no further identification. It was in fact the lesser nobles who &st employed surnames in the first half of the eleventh century, and their example was soon copied by the ministerials. The cognomina of these unimportant nobles and ministerials were not normally the names of ancestral castles, which most of them did not possess in the eleventh century, but the names of the villages in which they resided. The dynasties of comital rank adopted surnames only in the second third of the twelfth century. As the case of the Welfs shows, such surnames were not necessarily the names of castles, but of military strongholds usually named after the villages in which they were situated, for example, Wittelsbach or Weyarn. On occasion the castles were named after the builder himself, for example, Hernstein (Herrandstein), or after the family's heraldic symbol, for example, Falkenstein, suggesting, in contrast to what Schmid maintained, that the magnates had developed a sense of family identity before they consolidated their temtorial lordships and built the castles that served as the centers of their authority. The lords of Modling are, according to Stormer, a case in point.27Kuno

Stormer, Fni'her Adel, 40-41. Stormer, "Adel und Ministerialitat," 119-131. 27 Ibid., 128-129. For further information on the Miidlings, see Gunther Flohrschutz, "Die Vogte von Miidling und ihr Gefolge," Zeitschrift fur bayerische Landesgeschichte 38 (1975): 3-143. 25

26

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS 11, whose father Kuno I (d. 1097) had been the advocate of Gars in 1078, procured the advocacy of Au through his wife Richilt. In 1123, after Kuno 11's death, she obtained from Archbishop Conrad I of Salzburg a mountain near Au, where she built the castle of Modling; and her son, Kuno 111, employed the surname Modling for the first time in 1125.28In the following decades the Modlings consolidated their position between the Isen and the Inn; and Kuno IV (d. 1181) assumed the title of count in the early 1170s. The history of the Modlings thus appears at first glance to support Schmid's thesis that the acquisition and formation of a territorial lordship stimulated the development of a patrilineal family identity. The castle of Modling was apparently named, however, after a hamlet located between Trostberg and Baumburg in the Chiemgau, where the original property holdings of the Modlings were situated. The fact that Richilt named the castle after this hamlet suggests, therefore, that the family was already aware of its identity as Modlings before 1123. Finally, Stormer contends that Schmid underestimated the continued importance of enates as well as agnates after the formation of the pahiheal dynasties, particularly if the mother was an heiress and/or if her family was more prominent than her husband's.29 The Welfs provide a classic example. Welf IV, who continued the lineage, was in fact the son of Margrave Azzo of Este and Kunigunde, the sister of the last direct descendant of the house in the male line, Duke Welf (Welf 111) of Carinthia (1047-1055). The Estes became, in other words, the Welfs. The continuation of the Habsburgs by the house of Lorraine or of the Windsors by the Mountbattens are more recent instances of the same phenomenon. As the case of the Welfs shows, families often adopted leading names associated with the mother's ancestors. The name Ludwig, the distinctive leading name of the Wittelsbachs, borne by such members of the dynasty as the fourteenth-century emperor and the mad king who built Neuschwanstein in the nineteenth century, entered the lineage only through the marriage of Duke Otto I (1180-1183) to Agnes of Loon-Rieneck. The Bavarian magnates' continuing identification with their maternal ancestors and kinsmen during the high Middle Ages, as well as their slowness in adopting surnames and in founding dynastic monasteries, would appear to indicate, contrary to what both Prinz and Stormer have argued, that the nobility's self-awareness developed more slowly in Bavaria than in other parts of Germany and Europe, even if the first signs of the new mentality can already be detected in the tenth century. Patrilineal Lineages and the Investiture Conflict This transformation in the structure and self-perception of the nobility was a crucial factor in the evolution of political institutions in Germany.

''

Salzburger Urkundenbuch, ed. Willibald Hauthaler and Franz Martin, 4 vols. (Salzburg, 1910-1933): 2: 193-194, no. 126. 29 Stormer, "Adel und Ministerialitat," 112-1 16.

10

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

It is possible to see these changes as both a cause and a consequence of the Investiture C ~ n f l i c tThe . ~ ~ magnates' development of territorial lordforced the Salians to ships, for example, the Billung duchy of S a ~ o n y , ~ ' turn to their servile retainers, the precursors and/or ancestors of the imperial ministerials, for support and to develop their own royal domain, studded with castles and garrisoned by servile warriors, in eastern Saxony and T h ~ r i n g i aThis . ~ ~policy aroused the fears and anger of the Saxon nobility and free peasantry, and when Henry IV tried to regain the royal lands and rights that had been alienated during his long minority, the Saxons rebelled.33After Gregory VII excommunicated the king in February 1076, the dukes of Bavaria, Carinthia, and Swabia joined the revolt;34and the reformers among the nobility and episcopate proved, with some exceptions, to be the pope's leading allies.35The long and bitter conflict that ensued enabled the new and emerging noble dynasties, like the Zahringer in Swabia, to consolidate their position.36By the time the dispute ended at Worms in 1122, the balance of power had shifted in the nobility's favor. Frederick Barbarossa tried to revive the power of the monarchy by making the most powerful of the new territorial lords imperial vassals and by building a royal domain more extensive and stronger than that possessed

30 On the transformation of the German constitution during the Investiture Conflict, see Paul Joachimsen, "The Investiture Contest and the German Constitution," in Mediaeval Germany 911-1250: Essays by German Historians, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Barraclough, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1938): 2:95-129. 31 Hans-Joachii Freytag, Die Herrschaft der Billunger in Sachsen, Studien und Vorarbeiten zum historischen Atlas Niedersachsens 20 (Gottingen, 1951). 32 Karl Bosl, Die Reichsministerialitat der Salier und Staufer: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des hochmittelalterlichen deutschen Volkes, Staates und Reiches, MGH Schriften 10 (Stuttgart, 19501951), 32-112; and "Die Reichsministerialitat als Element der mittelalterlichen deutschen Staatsverfassung im Zeitalter der Salier und Staufer," Friihformen der Gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Europa: Ausgewahlte Beitrage zu einer Strukturanalyse der mittelalterlichen Welt (Munich, 1964), 326-356. 33 Lutz Fenske, Adelsopposition und kirchliche Reformbewegung im ostlichen Sachsen: Entstehung und Wirkung des sachsischen Widerstandes gegen das salische Konigtum wahrend des lnvestiturstreits, Veroffentlichungen des Max-Planck-lnstituts fiir Geschichte 47 (Gottingen, 1977). 34 On the events of 1076, see Hellmut Kampf, ed., Canossa als Wende: Ausgewahlte Aufsatze zur neueren Forschung, Wege der Forschung 12 (Darmstadt, 1963). 35 On the reform movement, see Karlotto Bogumil, Das Bistum Halberstadt im 12. lahrhundert: Studien zur Reichs- und Reformpolitik des Bischofs Reinhard und zum Wirken der AugustinerChorherren, Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 69 (Cologne, 1972), 63-102; Fenske, Adelsopposition; Kassius Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny: Studien zu den monastischen Lebensformen und Gegensatzen im Hochmittzlalter, Studia Anselrniana, 2 vols. (Rome, 1950-1951); Hans Hirsch, "The Constitutional History of the Reformed Monasteries during the Investiture Contest," in Barraclough, Mediaeval Germany, 2: 131-1 73; Hermann Jakobs, Der Adel in der Klosterreform von St. Blasien, Kolner historische Abhandlungen (KhAbh) 16 (Cologne, 1968); idem, Die Hirsauer: Ihre Ausbreitung und Rechtsstellung im Zeitalter des Investiturstreites, KhAbh 4 (Cologne, 1961); Jakob Mois, Das Stift Rottenbuch in der Kirchenreform des XI.-XII. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Ordens-Geschichte der Augustiner-Chorherren, Beitrage zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte, 3d ser., 19 (Munich, 1953); Schmid, "Adel und Reform," 295-319; and Josef Semmler, Die Klosterreform von Siegburg: lhre Ausbreitung und ihr Reformprogram im 11. und 12. lahrhundert, Rheinisches Archiv 53 (Bonn, 1959). 36 Theodor Mayer, "The State of the Dukes of Zahringen," in Barraclough, Mediaeval Germany, 2: 175-202.

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS

11

by any of the princes. The effort failed, and Germany remained for centuries a confederation of nobles and cities ruled by a figurehead king.37 The Codex Falkensteinensis The obvious importance of the change in the outlook of the nobility has prompted a number of scholars, including Schmid and Duby, to examine the family consciousness of individual dynasties in both Germany and F r a n ~ e . ~ ' monograph will investigate the sense of family identity This of the counts of Falkenstein. They were the rulers of a fairly compact lordship located between the Chiemsee and the high Alps on both sides of the lower Inn. The major centers of their lordship were: Falkenstein by Flintsbach on the west bank of the Inn; Neuburg by Vagen in the valley of the Mangfall in the modern township of Feldkirchen-Westerham; and Hartmannsberg near Hemhof, north of Prien on the Chiemsee. The counts also possessed the lordship of Hernstein in Lower Austria, northwest of Wiener Neustadt, and were the advocates of the Augustinian collegiate churches of Herrenchiemsee and Weyarn, of the Benedictine monastery of Petersberg located near Falkenstein, and of the property of the archbishopric of Salzburg in the C h i e m g a ~ . ~ ~ Count Siboto IV was the sponsor of a unique historical source, the Codex Falkensteinen~is.~~ He was preparing in the summer of 1166 to join Frederick Barbarossa's ill-fated fourth campaign in Italy and was apprehensive that he might not return.41Siboto's fears were expressed in the inscription that appears on the family portrait drawn on the rear of the first folio of the manuscript: "Dic valeas patri, bene fili, dicite matri. Qui legis hec care, nostri petimus memorare. Hoc quidem cuncti, mage tu, carissime fili."42

37 The best general histories of Salian-Hohenstaufen Germany, available in English, are: Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modem Germany, 2d ed. (New York, 1947); and Karl Hampe, Germany under the Salian and Hohenstaufen Emperors, ed. and trans. Ralph Bennett (Totowa, New Jersey, 1973). Bennett's introductory chapter about how recent scholarship has confirmed or revised Hampe's conclusions is especially valuable. On Frederick I, see Peter Munz, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (Ithaca, 1969). 38 See, for instance, Constance B. Bouchard, "The Structure of a Twelfth-Century French Family: The Lords of Seignelay," Viator 10 (1979): 39-56; Georges Duby, "French genealogical literature: The eleventh and twelfth centuries," The Chivalrous Society, 149-157; idem, "Structure of kinship," 134-148; idem, Medieval Marriage, 82-110; Karl Schmid, "Welfisches Selbstverstandnis," in Adel und Kirche: eds., Josef Fleckenstein and Karl Schmid, (Freiburg, 1968), 389-416; and Femand Vercauteren, "A kindred in northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries," in The Medieval Nobility, 87-103. 39 Prinz, "Bayems Adel," 69; and Max Spindler, ed., Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, 4 vols. (Munich, 1967-1974), 1: 325. O' The codex was first published in volume seven of the Monuments Boica (Munich, 1766). Hans Petz published a better edition in Drei bayerische Traditionsbucher aus dem XII. Jahrhundert: Festschrift zum 700 jahrigen ]ubilaum der Wittelsbacher Thronbesteigung (Munich, 1880), 1-44. Elisabeth Noichl has recently published a modem scholarly edition, Codex Falkensteinensis: Die Rechtsaufzeichnungen der Grafen von Falkenstein, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s. 29 (Munich, 1978). All citations are to the Noichl edition. " O n the origins, date, and content of the codex, see Noichl's introduction, 21:-47*. 42 Tafel I. The text is printed on p. 29*, n. 2.

12

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

He appointed his father-in-law, Kuno IV of Modling, who was to be assisted by five of the count's men, as the guardian of his sons, Kuno and Siboto V, if he died in Italy.43For the benefit of his father-in-law and his advisers, Siboto commissioned a canon of Herrenchiemsee to make a list of his fiefs (no. 2), to describe the location of the Falkensteins' Hantgemal (no. 3) and the endowment of the chapels located in his castles (no. 4), and to compile a manorial register (Urbar) and a codex of traditions (TraThis Urbar is the oldest extant register of manorial income ditionsbu~h).~~ and payments from a secular German lordship.45The Traditionsbuch contains notices about the count's acquisition of property and people. No formal charter had ever been drafted about most of these transactions; instead, brief notices describing the transactions and listing the witnesses who had been present and who could be summoned to testify had been written down on scraps of parchment. The canon summarized the available charters and gathered the scattered notices in a single codex. While the Bavarian bishoprics and monasteries had been making such codices of traditions since the eighth century, the Codex Falkensteinensis contains the only known collection from a nonecclesiastical source.46 Contrary to his expectations, Siboto returned from Italy; and the Urbar and the Traditionsbuch were emended and continued until his death around 1200. The Codex Falkensteinensis assumed, according to Elisabeth Noichl, its most recent editor, "gewissermassen den Charakter eines Haus- und fa mi lien archive^."^^ Siboto ordered the inclusion of the following items in the codex: a list of his own vassals (no. 106); inventories of valuable objects and weapons stored in his castles (nos. 104, 105); registers of his income as the advocate of Herrenchiemsee and as the advocate of the property of the church of Salzburg located in the Chiemgau (nos. 107, 108); notices about the consecration of the chapels in the castles of Hartmannsberg and Neuburg (nos. 179, 180) and about the penances Siboto had performed (no. 182); a family genealogy (no. 181); a notation about the eclipse of the sun in 1133 (no. 184); a medical prescription (no. 185); and even an order from Siboto to one of his retainers to murder an enemy 43 NO. 1. Kuno of Modling was not specifically identified in this entry as Siboto's fatherin-law, but the family relationship is made clear by nos. 128a and 163. "To avoid the repetition of too many similar footnotes, citations to specific entries in the Noichl edition of the Codex Falkensteinensis will be made in the text itself. '' Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 63*-69:. For additional information, see Philippe Dollinger, L'ivolution des classes rurales en Bavie're depuis la fin de I'ipoque carolingienne jusqu'au milieu du XllIe si?cle, Publications de la FacultC des lettres de I'Universiti. de Strasbourg 112 (Paris, 1949), 10-16. ''Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 43*-47:. For further information on Traditionsbiicher, see Heinrich Fichtenau, Das Urkundenwesen in ~ s t e r r e i c hv o m 8. bis z u m fruhen 13. Jahrhundert, Mitteilungen des Instituts fiir osterreichische Geschichtsforschung (MIOG), supplementary volume 23 (Vienna, 1971): 73-87, 100-106, and 174-179; Oswald Redlich, "Ueber bairische Tradtionsbiicher und Traditionen," MIOG 5 (1884): 1-82; and Josef Widemann, "Die Traditionen der bayerischen Kloster," Zeitschrift fiir bayerische Landesgeschichte 1 (1928): 225243. 47 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 37:.

KARL SCHMID & HIS CRITICS

13

(no. 183). One of the later scribes who worked for Siboto translated the codex into German, probably in the late 1190s; and this German version of the codex was continued until at least 1231.48Regrettably, the German text disappeared in the late seventeenth century, but Noichl has been able to reconstruct most of the later entries on the basis of excerpts made by scholars in the sixteenth century.49 The very uniqueness of the Codex Falkensteinensis poses an unanswerable question: was its sponsor, Siboto IV, a typical twelfth-century German noble? Since the written records of a secular lordship were likely to disappear when the noble family who held the lordship died out, it is quite possible that other noblemen commissioned similar compilations that have not survived. We owe it, after all, to the inexplicable accidents of history that the Codex Falkensteinensis itself exists.50On the other hand, the codex may have been the product of one man's idiosyncrasies. This monograph later suggests that Siboto may have ordered its compilation to protect his comparatively weak lordships from his stronger and rapacious neighbors, the dukes of Austria and Bavaria. (See section "The Causes of the Falkensteins' Decline" in last chapter.) Few noblemen may have been inclined to use such clerical weapons to protect themselves and their heirs. Unique or not, the Codex Falkensteinensis provides us with a rare insight into how one twelfth-century German noble perceived himself and his family.

" Ibid.,

13:-17:.

Published by Noichl as Anhang I, 165-169.

50 On the history of the manuscript, see Noichl, 11:-13:.

'9

11. THE ANCESTORS OF COUNT SIBOTO IV The Foundation of Weyarn

C

ount Siboto IV was born in 1126 (no. 181b) and first appeared as a witness with his father Rudolph in Salzburg on 9 July 1133.' As the presence of a seven-year-old boy attests, an important piece of family business had brought Rudolph and his son to Salzburg (see table I).' Siboto's maternal grandfather, Count Siboto I1 of Weyarn (d. 1136),3 was in the process of founding and endowing a church of Augustinian canons in his ancestral castle for the benefit of his soul and the souls of his wife Adelaide and their children, Siboto I11 and G e r t r ~ d e . ~ Although Weyarn was situated in the diocese of Freising, Siboto I1 gave his new foundation to the church of Salzburg. At his request Archbishop Conrad I (1106-1 147) appointed Siboto's son-in-law Rudolph, Gertrude's . ~ was stipulated that if any of husband, as the advocate of W e ~ a r n It Conrad's successors dared to use Weyarn for any purpose other than Siboto I1 had intended, the closest member of the count's consanguinity had the right to redeem the foundation by paying a bezant upon the altar of St. Rupert in the cathedral of Salzburg. Rudolph's apparent inclusion among his father-in-law's blood relatives is one clue that Siboto IV's parents were related by blood as well as by marriage. As we shall see, Rudolph and Gertrude probably were first cousins, once removed, an embarrassing fact that Siboto IV deliberately chose to ignore. Maternal Ancestors It is generally agreed that Siboto IV's first, known maternal ancestor was the Patto who was identified in 1003/1011 and again in 1034/41 as the advocate of the Bavarian Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee, ap-

' Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 234-236,

no. 158. Table 1 is based with some modifications that will be explained in the text on the genealogy provided by Franz Tyroller, Genealogie des altbayerischen Adels im Hochmittelalter, ed. Wilhelm Wegener, Genealogische Tafeln zur mitteleuropaischen Geschichte 4 (Gottingen, 1962): Tafel 15. On the date of Siboto 11's death, see Tyroller, Genealogie, 216-217, no. 3. ' On the foundation of Weyarn, see Stefan Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsreform und Bischofspolitik im 12. lahrhundert: Der Erzbischof Konrad I. von Salzburg (1106-1147) und die Regularkanoniker, Kolner historische Abhandlungen 24 (Cologne, 1975): 58-60. The issuance of a so-called foundation charter did not necessarily coincide with the actual foundation of a monastery. See Herwig Wolfram, "Zisterziensergriindung und Ministerialitat am Beispiel Zwettls," lahrbuch des Vereins fur Landeskunde von Niederosterreich 46/47 (1980/81): 8-9. Rudolph was not specifically identified as Siboto II's son-in-law in the charter, but Siboto IV indicated in the Codex Folkensteinensis, no. 181a, that his mother was named Gertrude and that her father had been named Siboto.

ANCESTORS

15

proximately twenty kilometers south of Weyam.6Two pieces of evidence provide the basis for this identification. First, the count's matemal grandfather, Siboto 11, who served as the advocate of Tegemsee between 1113 and March 1121,7was specifically identified in 1067/68 as the son of the Count Siboto who held the advocacy at that time and had presumably inherited a claim to the advocacy from Patto.' Second, the advocate Patto has been identified in turn as the Patto of Dilching who was named in the second decade of the eleventh century in the cartulary of the monastery of Ebersberg9 Hohendilching and Sonderdilching are situated on the left and right banks of the Mangfall, respectively, approximately six kilometers downstream from Weyam. Since Siboto I1 gave Dilching to Weyam as part of its original endowment," it is assumed that the advocate of Tegemsee, Patto of Dilching, was the father of Siboto I and the paternal grandfather of Siboto 11; but Patto could just as well have been Siboto 1's father-in-law and the matemal grandfather of Siboto 11. We must be careful not to impose our own patrilineal perceptions on such fragmentary evidence. In either case, Patto was Siboto IV's great-great-grandfather. Count Siboto I, the son or son-in-law of Patto of Dilching, briefly served as the advocate of Tegernsee in 1067/68, when his like-named son was mentioned for the first time." It is impossible to tell whether the subsequent references to a Count Siboto apply to the father or the son. Siboto I was married to a Liutgard,12 who was buried in Tegernsee. Siboto I1 gave the abbey some predial property for the benefit of her soul in the I I ~ O S . ' ~ The sister of Siboto 11, Friderun, was married to an otherwise unidentified Austrian noble named Hugo. According to the Passio s. Quirini, Friderun went mad after she ordered the seizure of a vineyard belonging to Tegemsee, but was miraculously cured when her mother Liutgard took her to the altar of the monastery's patron saint.14 Whatever the truth of this tale may be, it does suggest that Siboto IV's ancestors abused their position as the advocates of Tegernsee. As we shall see, they stole more than a vineyard and with less dramatic and drastic consequences. A Siboto of Weyam, either Siboto I or Siboto 11, was mentioned for the Die Traditionen des Klosters Tegemsee, ed. Peter Acht, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s., vol. 9, pt. 1 (Munich, 1952), 1-2, no. l a . and 18-19, no. 22. A Patto is last mentioned in the Traditionsbuch of Tegemsee between 1046 and 1048, 43, no. 54 and 44, no. 56, See Otto Freiherr von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch zur bairischosterreichischen Geschichte (Graz, 1931), 75; Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 73*-74'; and Tyroller, Genealogie, 216, no. 1. ' Traditionen Tegernsee, 111-140, nos. 144b, 145-147, 149, 151, 154, 176a. Ibid., 62-63, no. 80. Graf Friedrich Hector Hundt, "Das Cartular des Klosters Ebersberg," Abhnndlungen der historischen Classe der koniglich-bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 14, pt. 3 (1879): 131 I. 20. lo Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 234-236, no. 158. " Traditionen Tegernsee, 61-65, nos. 78, 80, and 82. '' "Acta s. Quirini martyns," ed. Theodor Mayer, Archivfur Kunde osterreichischer GeschichtsQuellen 3 (1849): 340, no. 41.

l 3 Traditionen Tegernsee, 123, no. 159.

" "Acta s. Quirini," 340, no. 41.

ANCESTORS

18

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

ANCESTORS

19

first time without a comital title between 1060 and 14 October 107715and with a comital title around 1080.16 Siboto I and/or Siboto I1 remained loyal to the Salians during the initial stages of the Investiture Conflict. Sometime between 1078 and 1084, at the height of the conflict between Henry IV and Gregory VII, when the king gave a ministerial to the church of Freising, a Count Siboto headed the list of witnesses.17 The Weyarns were thus one of the new Bavarian noble families, mentioned by Bosl (see chapter one), who owed their rise to prominence in the eleventh century to royal patronage, in their case enfeoffmentwith the advocacy of Tegernsee, and who supported the crown in its battle against the papacy.'' Siboto I1 served as the advocate of Tegernsee from 1113 until March 1121, when he was deposed for improper conduct and the office passed to the house of Andech;19 but he maintained his close ties to the abbey until his death." Siboto I1 was also the advocate of the Bavarian Benedictine monastery of Seeonz1and of the Augustinian collegiate church of Baumburgz2In addition, Franz Tyroller believed that Siboto I1 was the advocate of the Augustinian canons of Herren~hiemsee,'~ but the document Tyroller cited in proof almost certainly refers to Siboto IV rather than his grandfather.24Still, Tyroller was probably right. While Siboto IV succeeded his paternal uncle Wolfker on 12 September 1158, as the advocate of Herr e n ~ h i e m s e e Siboto , ~ ~ I1 was mentioned on several occasions in the Traditionsbuch of Herrenchiemsee in the brief period between Archbishop Conrad's introduction of the Augustinian Rule in that collegiate church sometime before July 112926and Siboto 11's foundation of Weyam and

Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1:287-288, no. 71. Die Traditionen des Hochstiftes Freising, ed. Theodor Bitterauf, 2 vols. Quellen und Erortemngen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, n.s. 4 and 5 (Munich, 1905-1909), 2: 474-477, no. 1648e. l 7 Ibid., 474, no. 1647. l 8 Patto was called in Traditionen Tegernsee, 1-2, no, l a the "fiscalis advocatus," which the editor in a note to 18-19, no. 22, translated as "Reichsvogt." l9 Traditionen Tenernsee, 111-140, nos. 144b, 145-147, 149, 151, 154 and 176a; and Spindler, Handbuch, 1:324. Traditionen Tegernsee, 120-153, nos. 155, 156, 158, 159, 165, 166a, 175, 176b, 177, 188, and 191. " "Necrologium Seonense," ed. Sigismund Herzberg-Frankel, MGH Necrologia Germaniae 2 (Berlin, 1890), 220; and Tyroller, Genealogie, 216, no. 3. 22 Monumenta Boica (Munich, 1764), 3: 10-11, no. 23. 23 Tyroller, Genealogie, 216, no. 3. 24 The document in question, Monumenta Boica (Munich, 1764), 2: 284, no. 5, which was witnessed by the advocate Siboto, involved Pilgrim of Eschenau, who appears in the Codex Falkensteinensis ca. 1155/1158 (no. 114). The witnesses included: Wolfker of Hartmannsberg, who is mentioned in the Codex between ca. 1145 and 1160/66 (nos. l l l b , 120c) and his son Wemher, who is mentioned in 1165/66 (no. 118a); Helmpold of Hartmannsberg, who appears in the 1160s (nos. 117, 120c, 140); and Henry of Halfing, who is named in 1166 (no. 79). The dates affixed to documents in the Monumenta Boica are often wrong and should be doublechecked. 25 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462-465, no. 333. I6 Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsreform, 52. l5

l6

-

20

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

renunciation of the world in 1133.27This suggests that Siboto I1 may in fact have been the advocate of Herrenchiemsee. If the advocacy of Herrenchiemsee did in fact pass from Siboto I1 to Siboto IV via the latter's paternal uncle Wolfker, this fact would provide another hint that Siboto IV's paternal and maternal relatives were kinsmen. Tyroller also believed that Siboto 11's wife Adelaide was the sister of was right, it would help to Count Berengar I1 of S u l z b a ~ hIf. ~Tyroller ~ explain how Siboto I1 became the advocate of Baumburg. Berengar had founded Baumburg around 1107 and had given the collegiate church shortly thereafter to the Holy See.29Siboto I1 obtained the advocacy because he was, in Tyroller's opinion, the brother-in-law of the founder. Siboto's apparent association with the pro-papal Sulzbachs also suggests that he had either broken with his father's pro-Salian policy or that he himself had changed allegiances at the beginning of the twelfth century.30 Siboto I1 and Adelaide were the parents of two children, Siboto I11 and Gertrude, the mother of Siboto IV. Siboto I11 is mentioned only in the foundation charter of Weyarn. Since Siboto I11 was not named as a witness in the charter and since Gertrude's husband Rudolph became the advocate of the new foundation, it is safe to conclude that Siboto 111 was already dead on 9 July 1133. Gertrude may also have been dead since there is no further reference to her. Providing for his own, his wife's, and his children's eternal well-being was undoubtedly Siboto 11's primary motive in founding Weyarn. He may also have had a guilty conscience. Siboto had fathered a bastard named Berthold of M o r m ~ o s e n ,who ~ ~ was specifically identified as a ministerial of Margrave Engelbert of Kraiburg3' Berthold's legal status indicates that he was a child of a liaison between Siboto I1 and a woman of servile origin. While Siboto was willing to acknowledge Berthold as his

'' Kuno of Hirnsberg gave Herrenchiemsee some property through the hand of Siboto 11. Monumenta Boica, 2: 285, nos. 8 and 9 . Siboto I1 and his wife gave the canons some property in Stottham. Ibid., 287, no. 15. He was the first witness 295, nos. 43 and 44. Tyroller, Genealogie, 216-217, no. 3. TyroUer also maintained that Siboto I1 had previously been mamed to the unnamed sister of the count of the Lumgau and cited Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1: 334-335, no. 161, as proof. Tyroller described this document as "einer bedeutenden Stiftung des Bischofs Altmann von Trient, des Sohnes von U. (Udalschalk of the Lumgau) . . . bei der 1126 Sigiboto Hauptzeuge war." It is nothing of the sort. This notice merely states that Count Siboto I1 of Weyam gave the monastery of St. Peter's in Salzburg some property that his knight Starchant had bequeathed to the abbey. I believe that Tyroller really intended to cite Urkunden-Buch des Landes ob der Enns (Vienna, 1852), 1: 427, no. 4, which is dated 26 August 1126. While Siboto I1 was the first witness in this exchange between Bishop Altmann and Archbishop Conrad I, I do not see how this entry from the Traditionsbuch of Suben proves Tyroller's point. 29 Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsreform, 72.

30 Spindler, Handbuch, 1: 252.

31 Schenkungsbuch der ehemaligen gefiirsteten Probstei Berchtesgaden, ed. Karl August Muffat,

Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte 1 (Munich, 1856), 258, no. 34. Significantly enough, Wolfker of Falkenstein, Rudolph's brother, was the first witness in this transaction, in which Siboto I1 gave Berchtesgaden some property at Berthold's request. 32 Monumenta Boica, 2: 293, no. 35.

ANCESTORS son, he was not mentioned in the foundation charter of Weyam, not even as a witness. The foundation of Weyam was part of Archbishop Conrad's program of religious reform. Conrad owed his preferment to Henry V, but he broke with the emperor over the latter's mistreatment of Pope Paschal I1 in 11 11. The archbishop spent most of the next ten years as an exile in Tuscany and Saxony.33Conrad had already reformed the collegiate churches of Reichersberg in 11 10 and Maria Saal in Carinthia around 11 16 and had been planning to reform the cathedral chapter of Salzburg as early as 1110, but he was able to implement his plans fully only after his return from Saxony in 1121.34Conrad introduced the Augustinian Rule in the cathedral chapter the same year, and he had reformed, revived, and/or founded thirteen collegiate churches, including Herrenchiemsee and Weyam, by 1143. The two papal proprietary houses in the archdiocese, Baumburg and Berchtesgaden, also adopted the Salzburg customs.35 As the advocate of Baumburg and as a benefactor of Herrenchiemsee, and possibly its advocate, Siboto I1 was thoroughly familiar with Conrad's reform program; and it was only natural that the count turned to the archbishop for assistance when he decided to establish his own foundation. ~ e ~ a m ' s l o c a t i oinn the diocese of Freising might have been an obstacle, but Conrad was a bitter enemy of Bishop Henry I1 of Freising (10981137), a staunch imperialist, whose deposition the archbishop had long vainly sought to procure.36Under the circumstances, Conrad would not have been overly concerned if Freising's rights had been violated, although there is no evidence that they were. Siboto himself, who was identified in the foundation charter as former count and as the former husband of Adelaide, became a lay brother in either Weyam or Ber~htesgaden.~~ Neuburg, located a few miles downstream on the Mangfall from weyarn, replaced Weyarn, as its name indicates, as the center of the 10rdship.~'

33 Kurt Zeillinger, Erzbischof Konrad I. von Salzburg 1106-1147, Wiener Dissertationen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte 10 (Vienna, 1968), 7-25. 34 Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsreform, 11-23. 35 bid., 26-74 and 293. 36 Zeillinger, Erzbischof Konrad I., 45-48. " Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsrefonn, 58, says that Siboto became a lay brother in Weyarn. Sometime between 1133 and his death in 1136, Siboto 11, who was identified as a "conversi de Wiaer," served as the proctor of Provost Eberwin of Berchtesgaden, who was also the founder of Baumburg. Schenkungsbuch Berchtesgaden, 257, no. 33. Weinfurter assumed that Weyam referred in this context to the new collegiate church and that Siboto had entered, therefore, his own foundation as a lay brother; but it is conceivable that Weyam referred to Siboto's former comital dignity and that he had joined the Augustinian canons of Berchtesgaden, whose provost was an old acquaintance. '' A Siboto of Neuburg, the co-advocate of Tegemsee, is mentioned in a charter of 1102. Monumenta Boica (Munich, 1766), 6: 163-164, no. 10. Josef von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein in Niederosteneich und den damit vereinigten Gutern Starhemberg und Emmerberg, Moritz Alois Becker, ed., Hernstein in Niederosteneich: Sein Gutsgebiet und das Land im weiteren Umkreise, 2, pt. 2 (Vienna, 1889): 30, n. 43, cited this document as the earliest reference to Neuburg, but admitted that the document is a later copy and that the surname was used on a regular

22

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

The construction of a new military stronghold in conjunction with the establishment of a monastery in an ancestral castle was a common occurrence in twelfth-century B a ~ a r i aAfter . ~ ~ the counts of Scheyem built a new castle, for example, at Wittelsbach, a sumame they fist employed in 1115,40they turned their ancestral castle into the Benedictine monastery of Scheyern, which served as the Wittelsbachs' burial place until 1253.*' It was a practical use for surplus military property. In conclusion, it is possible to say that Gertrude, the mother of Siboto IV, was the daughter of Count Siboto I1 of Weyam, the advocate of Baumburg, Seeon, Tegemsee, and possibly Herrenchiemsee, and of Adelaide, who may have been the sister of Count Berengar I1 of Sulzbach. The father of Siboto 11, Siboto I, had briefly served as the advocate of Tegernsee. Siboto I was the son or son-in-law of Patto of Dilching, who had been the advocate of Tegernsee at the beginning of the eleventh century. The Weyarns had supported Henry IV during the first phases of the Investiture Contest, but Siboto 11's close ties to Archbishop Conrad, the leader of the reform movement in Bavaria, indicate that Siboto I1 had been reconciled with the Church. Paternal Ancestors Siboto IV indicated that his father Rudolph was the son of Herrand of Falkenstein and the grandson of a Patto (nos. l l l a , 181a). The name of Siboto IV's paternal great-grandfather immediately calls to mind the advocate of Tegemsee, Patto of Dilching, who was the father or father-inlaw of Count Siboto I. The identity of Siboto W s paternal great-grandfather, Patto, is closely linked to the origins of the lordship of Hemstein and a controversial question in recent, Austrian medieval scholarship, namely, the theory of autogenous regalian rights. The castle of Hemstein in Lower Austria was obviously built in the late eleventh century by Herrand of Falkenstein as its name, Herrantestaine, indicates. Emperor Henry I1 had given Tegemsee on 29 May 1020, when Patto of Dilching was the advocate of the monastery, five royal hides located between the Piesting and Triesting

basis by the family only after the middle of the twelfth century. The next datable use of the designation Neuburg that I could find occurred in 1158. Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462465, no. 333. It is thus possible that the later copyist added the sumame Neuburg. Three other points should also be taken into consideration: 1. Count Siboto I was identified as the advocate of Tegemsee only in 1067/68; while Siboto I1 served as the advocate between 1113 and 1121. The reference to a Siboto of Neuburg as the advocate of Tegemsee in 1102 is thus suspicious. 2. The chapel in the castle of Neuburg was consecrated only in 1164, Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 180. It seems unlikely that it would have taken so long to consecrate the chapel in a castle that was already in existence in 1102. 3. Siboto IV used the sumame Weyarn after 1139. See below p. 51. This suggests that Weyam continued to serve as a center of the lordship even after the foundation of the collegiate church. It seems probable, therefore, that Neuburg was constructed sometime between 1133 and 1158. 39 Prinz, "Bayems Adel," 112-1 13. 'O Spindler, Handbuch, 1: 322. " Ibid.. 387.

ANCESTORS

23

Rivers, that is, precisely in the area in which the later lordship of Hemstein Although Duke Leopold VI of Austria confirmed this grant was ~ituated.~' in 1204, there is no evidence that Tegernsee ever actually possessed the five hides.43Josef von Zahn had already observed a century ago in his study of the lordship of Hernstein: Waren nicht die Falkensteiner, sondem die von Weyam-Neuburg die Griinder von Hemstein, so liesse sich etwa aus der Vogtei der Letzteren iiber Tegemsee eine Abtretung des Gutes an sie annehmen. Dann fiele Hemstein mit den fiinf Konigshuben zusammen, welche Kaiser Heinrich 11. demselben zugewendet hatte. Allein die Falkensteiner waren nicht Vogte des Klosters, auch kennt man sie nur als freie Eigenthiirner von Grund und Boden zu Hernstein, und so entfallt jenes an sich bequeme Erklar~ngsrnittel.~~

Hernstein could thus be cited as an example of how nobles with their innate right to command were able to create a lordship in an unclaimed wilderness area. In 1972 Michael Mitterauer, the leading critic of this theory of autogenous noble rights, simply identified Herrand's father Patto as the advocate of Tegernsee and referred to Hernstein as an example of a lordship that was formed when an advocate usurped property that had been given to the monastery he had sworn to defend.45 Like Mitterauer, Noichl believes that Patto of Dilching was one of Siboto IV's paternal as well as maternal ancestors; but she feels that the generational gap between Patto and Herrand is too great to make the advocate Patto the father of Herrand of Falkenstein. If Herrand had been the son of Patto, who was last mentioned in the 1040s, Herrand would have been, she says, about sixty-five years of age at the birth of his son Rudolph, who first served as a witness around 1120 and who married Gertrude around 1125.Noichl cites the eighteenth-century provost of Weyarn, Rupert Sigl, who wrote that both the Weyarns and Falkensteins were the descendants of a common ancestor named Patto, whom Noichl identifies as Patto of Dilching. She surmises that Patto had two sons: Siboto I, who acquired the property around Weyarn and the advocacy of Tegernsee; and a second son who obtained the five royal hides in Lower Austria. This second son, Herrand's father, may also have been named Patto since Provost Sigl mentioned a second Patto in his genealogy of the founders

4 Z D i eUrkunden Heinrichs 11. und Arduins, ed. H. Bresslau, MGH Diplomaturn regum et imperatorum Germaniae 3 (Berlin, 1957), 431, no. 552. 4 3 Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger in Osterreich, ed. Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zollner, 4 vols. Publikationen des Instituts fiir osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, 3d ser. 3 (Vienna, 1950-1968), 1: 189, no. 145. 44 Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, 34. 4 5 Michael Mitterauer, "Formen adeliger Herrschaftsbildung im hochmittelalterlichen 0 s terreich. Zur Frage der 'autogenen Hoheitsrechte,' " Mitteilungen des Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 80 (1972): 292-293. For information about the response to Mitterauer's criticism of the theory of autogenous regalian rights, see Wolfram, "Zisterziensergriindung und Ministerialitat," 20-21, n. 112.

24

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

., Inset 2

Lower Austria

,

Heiligenkreuz

Legend

A Castle Monastery

Vtllage Scale of Miles

city

ANCESTORS

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

26

TABLE2. Noichl's Reconstruction of the Weyam-Falkenstein Genealogy

Patto of Dilching

I

I

son Gerold?, Patto? ~ e r r h Id

~ i b h t oI

I

Siboto I1 Siboto 111

I

Gertrude of Weyam

Rudolph of Falkenstein Siboto IV

of Weyam; or Herrand's father may have been the Gerold whom Siboto IV wrongly identified as the father of Siboto I1 (181a).46 According to Noichl's reconstruction of the Weyam-Falkenstein genealogy, Patto of Dilching was the great-grandfather of both Gertrude of Weyam and Rudolph of Falkenstein, who were second cousins (see table 2).47The apparent inclusion of Rudolph of Falkenstein among Siboto II's blood relatives in the foundation charter of Weyam and the possible transfer of the advocacy of Herrenchiemsee from Siboto I1 to Rudolph's brother Wolfker provide corroborating evidence that Rudolph and Gertrude were the descendants of a common ancestor. Both branches of the lineage had clearly benefited from Emperor Henry 11's appointment of Patto as the advocate of Herrenchiemsee. While Noichl's reconstruction of the Weyam-Falkenstein genealogy may be correct, she has overlooked several pieces of evidence. First, long generational gaps between fathers and sons were the norm among both nobles and ministerials, at least in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when genealogies can be more easily reconstructed. As we shall see in the final chapter, Siboto IV's older son was a bachelor when he left on the Third Crusade at the age of thirty-five; and the count's younger son Siboto V was forty when he finally mamed. While this does not necessarily mean that a similar generational gap separated Herrand of Falkenstein from his sons, it is worth keeping the possibility in mind. Second, Siboto IV mentioned that his paternal grandfather, Herrand of Falkenstein, had gone on a crusade (no. l l l a ) , probably the ill-fated expedition that Duke Welf I and Archbishop Thiemo of Salzburg, the leaders of the Gregorian party in Bavaria in the 1090s, had led to the Holy Land in l101.48There is no evidence that Herrand, like most of the other participants, ever returned. Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 75'-76:.

2 is based on the genealogy provided by Noichl, 76'.

James Lea Cate, "The C ~ s a d eof 1101," in A History of the Crusades 1, ed. Marshall W. Baldwin, (Madison, 1969): 343-367, esp. 350. 46

" Table

27

ANCESTORS

Rudolph and his brothers must thus have been born, or at least have been conceived, before 1101. Third and most important, Noichl ignored a document that Otto Freiherr von Dungem had already linked to Herrand of On 26 March 1099, Pope Urban I1 placed the Carinthian Falken~tein.~~ monastery of St. Paul under the protection of the Holy See. The scribe who drafted the papal charter added the notation that a Herrand of Griggingen and his unnamed sons had been present when the pope had issued the charter in the palace of the L a t e r a ~ ~ . ~ ' Two entries from the codices of traditions of the Benedictine monastery of Gottweig in Lower Austria reveal that this Herrand of Griggingen was none other than Herrand of Falkenstein. According to Codex A, which was written no later than 1136, a ministerial named ~ertholdgave Gottweig several serfs sometime in the 1120s with the consent of hislord, ~ o l f k e i of G r i k k i ~ ~ g i Some n . ~ ~ of the serfs were required to pay the abbey an annual census of five pennies, that is, they became altar dependents (censuales), while the others were to procure the status of abbatial ministerial^.^^ Berthold handed the serfs over to a noble named Truther, who in turn gave them to the noble Hermann, who actually granted them to G ~ t t w e i g . ~ ~ According to Codex B, which was started in 1135/36, Reginold of Hernstein placed some serfs sometime in the 1120s at Berthold's request into the hands of Hartwig of U l t ~ h e i mThis . ~ ~ placement had occurred in the presWolfker, and the sons oftheir ence of ~ e g i n o l d sbrothers, ~ u d o l ~ h - a n d sister who were named Rudolph and Herrand. Hartwig then handed the serfs over to Truther, who in turn gave them to a noble named Hermann. Hermann finally conferred the serfs, some as censuales, the others as minof the witnesses and of the serfs are isterial~,to ~ i i t t w e iThe ~ . ~names ~ nearly identical in both entries. In spite of the discrepancies, it is clear that both entries were referring to the same transaction, that Griggingen was another name employed by the lords of Falkenstein-Hemstein at the beginning of the twelfth century, and that Herrand of Falkenstein-Griggingen was the father of a daughter and three sons, Reginold, Rudolph, Herrand's presence at the papal court in 1099 speaks for and W01fker.~~ itself. 49 Von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch, 77. Von Dungem identified this Herrand as

Siboto IV's great-grandfather (we have no evidence that such a man existed), but it seems

more probable that the witness of 1099 was the crusader of 1101, whom Siboto IV identified

as his grandfather. Von Dungem's erroneous identification of Herrand of Griggingen as the

count's great-grandfather may explain why Noichl ignored the document.

Monumenta historica ducatus Carinthiae, ed. Auwst von Jaksch (Klagenfurt, 1904), 3:

204-205, no. 508.

5 1 Die Traditionsbucher des Benediktinerstiftes Gottweig, ed. Adalbert Fuchs, Fontes rerum

Austriacarum, Zweite Abteilung 69 (Vienna, 1931), 3. 5 2 For information about censuales, see Dollinger, L'ivolution des classes rurales, 332-382. 53 Traditionsbucher Gottweig, 311-312, no. 175. 54 Ibid., 9. 55 Ibid., 446-448, no. 314. 56 The location of Griggingen is not clear. August von Jaksch, the editor of the Monumenta Carinthiae (vol. 4 [Klagenburt, 19061, 889), did not attempt to locate Griggingen (he listed

-

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

The sons of Herrand of Falkenstein were thus not only alive in 1099, but old enough to accompany their father to Rome; and Noichl's generational gap of sixty-five years is considerably narrowed. Although we can never know for sure, I am inclined to believe that Patto of Dilching was in fact the father of Herrand of Falkenstein and that there is no need to insert, as Noichl did, an additional generation in the genealogy between the advocate of Tegernsee and Siboto IV's paternal grandfather. Patto of Dilching was, in other words, the father of Herrand I, who acquired the lordship of Falkenstein and the property that Patto had usurped in Lower Austria, and the father or father-in-law of Siboto I, who inherited the lordship of Weyarn and a claim to the advocacy of Tegernsee (see table 1). If I am right, Rudolph, the son of Herrand of Falkenstein, and Gertrude, the granddaughter of Siboto I, were in fact first cousins, once removed. In conclusion, it is certain that both Rudolph of Falkenstein, Siboto IV's father, and his wife, Gertrude of Weyarn, were descendants of Patto of Dilching, the advocate of Tegernsee at the beginning of the eleventh century. Both branches of the Weyarn-Falkenstein lineage had thus benefited from Patto's position as the advocate of Tegernsee, and the lordship of Hernstein cannot be cited as evidence for the nobility's autogenous regalian rights. We will probably never know with complete certainty the exact nature of Rudolph's and Gertrude's relationship, but I believe that Rudolph's father, Herrand I of Falkenstein, who was also known as Herrand of Griggingen and who was a papal partisan during the Investiture Contest, was the son of Patto and the brother or brother-in-law of Siboto I, Gertrude's paternal grandfather. The marriage of Siboto IV's parents, who were first cousins, once removed, was a flagrant violation of canon law. In spite of their close ties to the papal party, the Weyarns and Falkensteins had totally disregarded the teachings of the Church on this sensitive issue. The Marriage of Siboto's Parents Rudolph's marriage to Gertrude was a deliberate attempt to reunite the divided patrimony of the Weyarn-Falkenstein lineage, which was threatened with permanent dismemberment by the pending extinction of the Grikingen as an alternate spelling). Adalbert Fuchs, the editor of the codices of traditions of Gottweig, suggested that Grikkingen might be Gigging, a village located near Altenworth on the Danube in Lower Austria (Traditionsbucher Gottweig, 311). Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 216, listed references to Kekingen, Gekingen, Gekkinge, and Geggingin in the index under Gogging in the township of Riedering in the Landkreis of Rosenheim in Upper Bavaria. Fuchs, 312, also stated that Wolfker of Grikkingen was the same person as the noble Wolfker of Nalb, whom Fuchs (notes to nos. 170, 276, 414) in turn identified with Wolfker of Erla and Wolfker of Inzersdorf, the brother of Ekkirch of Kuffem. Since Wolfker of Nalb was still alive in 1161 (490-492, no. 358), while Wolfker of Falkenstein was already dead on September 12,1158 (Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462-465, no. 333), Wolfker of Nalb cannot have been the same person as Wolfker of Falkenstein. Nevertheless, the fact that the latter had the same first name as one or more Austrian nobles who were also associated with Gottweig in the first half of the twelfth century suggests that the various Wolfkers were somehow related, perhaps through Rudolph's and Wolfker's mother, the wife of Herrand of Falkenstein.

ANCESTORS

29

male line of the counts of Weyarn. The marriage occurred no later than 1125; Siboto IV was born in 1126. Gertrude's brother, Siboto 111, must either have been dead at the time of his sister's marriage or all the parties involved must have realized that it was unlikely that he would ever father an heir. The leader of the reformers in Bavaria and Austria, Archbishop Conrad, who had returned to Salzburg in 11 2 1 after an exile of ten years, may have decided that it was politically expedient to look the other way while some of his most important supporters settled their dynastic affairs. The advocatory clause in the foundation charter of Weyarn suggests that Conrad was fully aware that the marriage had been consanguineous. Rudolph's assumption of the comital dignity was a direct consequence of his marriage. Neither his father nor his brothers were ever identified as counts, and Rudolph himself used the title only occasionally. He was not called a count in the foundation charter of Weyarn or in the codices to have been a courtesy of traditions of Baumburg and G o t t ~ e i gIt. appears ~~ title that was conferred upon Rudolph by his son (no. 2) or by institutions with which Rudolph was closely associated. The monks of Tegernsee referred to him as a count,58 and he was remembered as a count in the necrology of Seeon, where he had succeeded his father-in-law as the advocate.59The designation might have become customary if Rudolph had lived longer and had assumed direct control of his father-in-law's county, but the foundation charter of Weyarn contains in fact the last datable reference to Rudolph, who died as a monk in Seeon.'jOSiboto IV

Monuments Boica 2: 10-11, no. 23; and Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 446-448, no. 314. Traditionen Tegernsee, 129-130, no. 165. 59 "Necrologium Seonense," 222; and Tyroller, Genealogie, 216, no. 3. "Necrologium Seonense," 222. Tyroller, Genealogie, 217-218, no. 9, dates the entry in the Traditionsbuch of Tegemsee (129-130, no. 165), in which Rudolph was called a count, between 9 July 1133, and 10 October 1136. The editor of the Traditionsbuch dated the entry between March 1121 and 1126. Tyroller did not explain why he changed the date, but I presume that the reason is Rudolph's comital title. Tyroller apparently assumed that Rudolph was styled a count only after Siboto II's withdrawal from the world (he was identified as a former count in the foundation charter of Weyam). While this argument sounds plausible, Tyroller's reason for making 10 October 1136, the date of Siboto 11's death (Tyroller says on 216, no. 3, that Siboto died on October 2), the other terminal date, must have been the presence of Siboto 11 as a witness. This strikes me as a case of circular reasoning. If the notice is to be dated after 9 July 1133, because Rudolph assumed the comital title only after Siboto 11's conversion, one cannot then make the other terminal date 10 October 1136, because Count Siboto of Weyam was a witness. Tyroller, 217-218, no. 9, also stated that Rudolph withdrew from the world in 1144, but cited no source for this date. I am inclined to believe that Rudolph's conversion and perhaps also his death had occurred considerably earlier. As we have just seen, there is no certain reference to Rudolph after 9 July 1133. In addition, a Count Siboto of Weyam (Siboto IV) was listed as a witness in an entry in the Traditionsbuch of the cathedral chapter of Salzburg (Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1: 621, no. 78), which the editor dated as "wahrscheinlich 1139, Marz-Mai." Regrettably, Abbot Hauthaler did not explain why he dated the entry in this way, but the presence of the castellan Liutwin, who became the burgrave of Hohensalzburg in 1139, indicates that this document cannot be dated any earlier than 1139. It is hard to believe that a thirteen-year-old boy would have been asked to witness by himself a transaction, which occurred in the presence of the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishop of Gurk and which was also witnessed by the counts 57 58

30

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

was thus the first "Falkenstein" to be consistently styled a count. The history of the Falkensteins' comital title suggests that the Weyarns were the senior and more distinguished branch of the Weyarn-Falkenstein lineage. Siboto's Other Relatives Rudolph's brother and Siboto IV's paternal uncle, Reginold of Falkenstein-Hernstein, was mentioned by name only in the 1 1 2 0 ~ . Siboto's ~l other paternal uncle, Wolfker, died only shortly before 12 September 1158, There when Siboto succeeded him as the advocate of Herren~hiemsee.~' are numerous references to Wolfker in the Codex Falkensteinensis, and he probably was the guardian and chief counselor of his nephews, Siboto IV and Herrand 11, who had been orphaned at an early age. Wolfker was the father of two sons: Otto of Hernstein, who was one of Siboto IV's own retainers (no. 1); and Lazarus of Falkenstein, a ministerial of the counts of Andech-Wolfratshausen, who was usually called Lazarus of Wolfratsh a u ~ e n It. ~is~not known whether the boys, who were Siboto IV's first cousins, were bastards or the sons of a misalliance who acquired the legal status of their servile mother (or mothers). Rudolph's sister Adelaide, Siboto IV's paternal aunt, was the wife of the Austrian noble, Poto of Pottenstein, and the mother of a daughter Kunigunde, who became a nun in Admont d , ~ served ~ as around 1140, and of two sons, Rudolph and H e ~ ~ a nwho witnesses with their maternal uncles.'j5 of Burghausen and Plain, if his father had still been actively involved in earthly affairs. The evidence suggests that both Rudolph's entry into monastic life and his death occurred shortly after 9 July 1133. Monumenta Boica 2: 279-282, no. 1, and 3: 13-14, no. 33; and Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 446-448, no. 314. 62 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462-465, no. 333. Wolfker was not identified in the charter as the previous advocate, but he was called the advocate in Monumenta Boica, 2: 289, no. 21; 293; no. 37; and 312, no. 97. 63 He was called Lazarus of Falkenstein, the son of Wolfker, in Die Traditionen des Klosters Schiiftlarn 760-1305, ed. Alois Weissthanner, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, ms., 10, pt. 1 (Munich, 1953): 81-84, no. 74. He was identified as Wolfker's son and as a Wolfratshausen ministerial in the Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 115. Lazarus was identified as a ministerial of Count Berthold of Andech-Wolfratshausen, who became the margrave of Istria in 1173, in Traditionen Tegernsee, 236-239, no. 315b; and in Die Traditionen und Urkunden des Stiftes Diessen 1114-1362, ed. Waldemar Schlogl, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s., 22, pt. 1 (Munich, 1967): 108-109, no. 5. 64 Poto of Pottenstein and his son Rudolph are mentioned in 1133 in the Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 386-387, no. 246. Adelaide of Pottenstein gave Admont some property through the hand of the nobleman, Herrand of Wolfgerstaine, around 1140, when her daughter Kunigunde became a nun in Admont. Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermark, ed. Josef von Zahn (Graz, 1875), 1: 202, no. 192. Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, 29, n. 40, surmised that Herrand of Wolfgerstaine was Adelaide's second son. Von Zahn also published in the Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermark (Graz, 1879), 2, Nachtrage, 4, no. 3, an entry from the Traditionsbuch of Admont, dated around 1140, in which a Helica of Pottenstein and her son Rudolph entrusted some property to Herrand of Wolfgerstein, when she offered her daughter Kunigunde to Admont as a nun. In spite of the discrepancies in names, I presume that both documents refer to the same individuals. The Traditionsbiicher of Admont were destroyed in a fire at the beginning of the nineteenth century and Zahn had to rely, therefore, on an earlier copy. It is thus quite possible that errors in transcription have occurred. 65 Monumenta Boica, 2: 286, no. 13; and Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 446-448, no. 314.

ANCESTORS

Siboto IV was married to Hildegard, the daughter of Kuno IV of Modling (nos. 128a, 163); and they were the parents of two sons, Kuno and Siboto V, who were already alive in the mid-1150s (no. 114) and who were considered to be adults around 1170.66It is worth noting that the boys were not identified by name before they attained their majority, but were simply described as the sons of Siboto (nos. 114, 120c, 122, 133, 134, 136a, 140). Several pieces of evidence indicate that Kuno was the older brother: he was mentioned first in the genealogy that Siboto included in the codex (no. 181a); he appeared without his brother before 1173;67and he was always listed first when he and Siboto V were named as transactors . ~ ~ have no precise information about the birthdays of or w i t n e s s e ~ We Kuno and Siboto V, but since the German kings, Otto I11 and Henry IV, were fourteen when they were considered to be of age,69it is an educated guess that Siboto's sons were in their mid-teens in 1170. Siboto IV and Hildegard were also the parents of more than one daughter, but their names are unknown.70One daughter was married to the Upper Austrian nobleman, Engelschalk of Wasen (no. 143). Hildegard died on 29 March 1196, a few years before her husband.71 Siboto IV's younger brother, Herrand I1 of Falkenstein (nos. 79, 11la), and his wife Sophia, the daughter was the advocate of S e e ~ n . Herrand ~' of Margrave Dietpold of Vohburg (no. 148),73were the parents of three children: Siboto of Antwort (no. 136a), Herrand I11 (no. 152), 74 and Judith (no. 157), who was married first to Nizo of Raitenbuch, a ministerial of the bishop of Regensburg (no. 166), and then to the Bavarian noble, Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg (nos. 171, 172). Herrand I1 died around 1155 (no. 115) and Sophia married Count Conrad I1 of Peilstein (nos. 150, 151).

66 Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 136. This entry, which Noichl dated ca. 1169-1170, referred to "corniti scilicet Sigbotoni, et filiis suis, qui sint viri." 6 7 M ~ n u m e n t aBoica, 2: 297-301, nos. 52, 56, 58, and 63. None of these entries can be precisely dated, and the dates given in the Monumenta Boica are clearly wrong. No. 52 must be dated between 1158, when Siboto IV became the advocate of Henenchiemsee (Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462-465, no. 333), and 1173, when Margrave Engelbert I11 of Kraiburg died (Tyroller, Genealogie, Tafel 20, no. 12). The margrave was also mentioned in no. 56. No. 63 involved Siboto of Antwort, who &ed around 1170 (Tyroller, 220, no. 20). In addition, it was pointed out above that Kuno was not identified by name in the Codex Falkensteinensis before around 1170. Thus all these entries in the Traditionsbuch of Henenchiemsee should probably be dated around 1170. Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 145; Monumenta Boica, 2: 303-304, no. 70 and 344-345, no. 190; and Traditionen Schaftlarn, 181-182, no. 182. 69 Mathilde Uhlirz, Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reiches unter Otto 11. und Otto Ill., vol. 2, Otto 111. 983-1002 (Berlin, 1954), 174; and Gerold Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V., vol. 1, 1056 bis 1069 (1890; reprinted, Berlin, 1964), 400-401. 70 When Siboto IV bought some property from Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg and placed it in the custody of Count Kuno V of Modling, it was stipulated "ut eadem predia prenominato comiti Sibotoni et filiis eius et non filiabus (the italics are mine) conservaret." Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 171. 7 1 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 79*.

7 2 "Necrologium Seonense," 223; and Tyroller, Genealogie, 218-220, no. 15.

73 Tyroller, Genealogie, 218-220, no. 15.

74 Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 515-516, no. 381.

32

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

She died on 12 March 1176, and was survived by her second husband.75 Herrand I1 and his sons were never identified as counts.76 This reconstruction of Siboto IV's genealogy is largely based on sources other than the Codex Falkensfeinensis. It is thus of interest to compare what we know about Siboto's ancestors and kinsmen with what he knew or, rather, chose to tell. Tyroller, Genealogie, 218-220, no. 15. See, for instance, Codex Falkensteinensis, nos. 102, 115, 118, 135, 136, and 157; Monumenta Boica, 2: 293-315, nos. 37, 80, 91, 100, and 106; and Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 300-302, no. 206b. 75

76

111. SIBOTO IV's KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY Siboto's Own Presentation of His Genealogy

A

fter his return from Frederick Barbarossa's fourth campaign in Italy, Siboto IV added a genealogy to the Codex Fatkensteinensis (no. 181a) (see table 3).' According to the count, Rudolph's father and grandfather had been named, respectively, Herrand and Patto; while his mother Gertrude was the daughter of Siboto and the granddaughter of Gerold. He added that his own wife was named Hildegard and that their sons were called Kuno and Siboto. Several things are noteworthy about this genealogy. First, although Siboto mentioned his paternal ancestors first, the genealogy is bilateral; and his knowledge of his father's and mother's ancestry was equally limited. He supplied no surnames. None of Siboto's collateral relatives, namely, his paternal and maternal uncles, his brother, or his nephews, was included; and only two women, his mother and his wife, were named. He excluded his great-grandmother Liutgard, his great-aunt Friderun, and his grandmother Adelaide, and his own daughters. In contrast, Lambert of Wattrelos, a canon of Saint Aubert in Cambrai and the author of the Annales Cameracenses, which were written between 1152 and 1170, referred to seventy-three individuals, thirty-five by name, in his family genealogy which he included in the annals. Among these seventy-three individuals were nineteen women, most of whose names were given, and numerous collateral relative^.^ The first impression that Siboto's genealogy gives, is, therefore, of two strictly patrilineal dynasties who were united by Rudolph of Falkenstein's marriage to an heiress, Gertrude of Weyarn. It is, as we already know, a misleading impression. Second, the genealogy is remarkably brief. While the memory of the Flemish counts of Guines, whose genealogy has been examined by Duby, extended back from the end of the twelfth century for eight generation^,^ Siboto IV could trace his lineage no farther back than Lambert of Wattrelos, who belonged to a knightly family far lower in the social hierarchy than While most readers of this monograph are not the counts of Falken~tein.~ members of the high nobility, I am certain that most of us can name as many of our ancestors as Siboto did of his. After all, duplicating Siboto's

' Table 3 is based on the genealogy provided by Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 73* Duby, "Structure of kinship," 135-138. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 136.

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

34

TABLE3. Siboto IV's Own Account of His Genealogy Weyarn-Neuburg Gerold

par

Falkenstein-Hemstein

I

I

Herrand (I)

Siboto (11)

I

I

~ert'rude

Rudolph Siboto IV m.'Hildegard

I

Kuno

~ i b d t o(v)

feat merely requires that a child has heard a parent or grandparent mention his or her grandparents or parents by name. Although Siboto's parents died while he was a child, his paternal uncle Wolfker lived until the mid1150s and could easily have supplied Siboto with the information. Moreover, there must have been individuals in a great nobleman's household who had personally known Siboto's grandparents and possibly even his great-grandparents. Thus we can only conclude that Siboto did not care about his ancestry or, more probably, that his knowledge was limitedbut not so limited as he pretended. Third, the genealogy is misleading, if not e r r o n e o u ~We . ~ know from the Traditionsbuch of Tegernsee, as has already been explained in the preceding chapter, that the father of Siboto I1 was the advocate of Tegernsee, Siboto I, and not a Gerold. It should be pointed out, however, that Siboto IV did not actually say that Siboto 11's father was named Gerold, but rather that his own great-grandfather was named Gerold ("eiusdem comitis mater dicebatur Gerdrut, avus eius Sigboto, attavus eius Gerolt"). The possibility thus exists that Gerold was the maternal grandfather of Gertrude, that is, the father of Siboto 11's wife Adelaide; but in that case Adelaide could not have been, as Tyroller believed, the sister of Count Berengar I1 of Sulzbach, who was the son of Count Gebhard I.6 If Gerold was in fact the father-in-law of Siboto 11, it is intriguing that Siboto IV remembered the name of his mother's maternal grandfather, but forgot the name of his mother's paternal grandfather, Siboto I. In any case, the father of Siboto I1 was not named Gerold. More important, Siboto did not indicate that his parents were the descendants of a common ancestor, Patto of Dilching. Instead, Siboto merely stated that Patto had been his father's grandfather. It is hard to believe that Siboto, who knew that he was a distant kinsman Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis,73*-77*.

"pindler,

Handbuch, 1: 332-333.

SIBOTO IV'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY

35

of two other Austro-Bavarian noble dynasties, the Haunsbergs and Bruckbergs (no. 3), did not know that Rudolph and Gertrude were either second cousins, as Noichl has argued, or perhaps even, as I am inclined to believe, first cousins, once removed. His silence was deliberate. The reason for Siboto IV's silence can only have been that his parents' marriage was flagrantly consanguineous. Constance B. Bouchard has recently argued that the French nobility was familiar with the teachings of the Church and normally avoided in the tenth and eleventh centuries "blatantly consanguineous marriages." French noblemen rarely married a closer relative than a fourth or fifth cousin and never married a first cousin. Societal disapproval eventually forced the few second and third ad.~ cousins who had defied the Church to procure a d i ~ o r c eBouchard mitted, however, that fear of marrying a social inferior made the French nobility more willing to marry within the prohibited degree in the twelfth century.8 Duby has argued, on the other hand, that the nobility paid little attention to Church doctrine and that such endogamous unions, designed to preserve and increase the family patrimony, were common in the eleventh century. In the course of the twelfth century the Church gradually accepted marriages that it would previously have condemned as incestuous. The Fourth Lateran Council's reduction of the prohibition of incestuous marriages from the seventh to the fourth degree was the culmination of the Church's accommodation to lay practice^.^ Gertrude's and Rudolph's marriage, which would never have been sanctioned by the Church, was clearly such an endogamous union; and Siboto IV's reluctance to draw attention to it in a private collection of family documents is an indication that he was acutely embarrassed by his parents' action. His father's assumption of the monastic habit may well have been an act of contrition. This analysis of Siboto IV's presentation of his genealogy has shown that he placed equal emphasis on his paternal and maternal ancestors, supplied no surnames, and ignored his collateral relatives, his daughters, and all of his female ancestors, except for his mother. If the mysterious Gerold whom Siboto IV included in his genealogy was in fact his mother's maternal grandfather, his presence in the genealogy would be circumstantial evidence that Siboto I1 acquired Weyarn from his father-in-law rather than his father, Siboto I. Siboto IV's knowledge of his ancestry was very limited, an indication that the Bavarian nobility's concern with its direct ancestry was a relatively new phenomenon in the mid-twelfth century; but Siboto almost certainly knew more than he presented in his genealogy. His silence, perhaps his deliberate obfuscation, concealed his parents' consanguineous marriage.

Constance B. Bouchard, "Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries," Speculum 56 (1981): 272. Ibid., 284-286. Duby, Medieval Marriage, esp. 1-22 and 80-81.

SIBOTO IV'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY

37

legal content of these entries, but will attempt rather to analyze the information the two notices provide about the Falkensteins' family consciousness. The Falkensteins' Hantgemal consisted of a single noble hide, situated in Geislbach, in the modem township of Matzbach, west of Dorfen, in the Landkreis of Erding.14 It was located at a considerable distance from the center of Siboto's Bavarian lordship, namely, about 50 kilometers due north of Falkenstein as the crow flies. As the codex itself indicates, Geislbach was not situated in Siboto's own county, but in the court (Landgericht) of Furtam.'' While Bruckberg, which is situated southwest of Landshut, is only 25 kilometers north of Geislbach, Haunsberg, which is located north of Salzburg, is at least 80 kilometers to the southeast. The same Hantgemal was thus shared by three families who lived at a considerable distance from each other and in opposite directions from the common token of their free status. As far as I know, none of these families exercised any rights of lordship in Geislbach itself. Second, Siboto IV's initial statement about his Hantgemal (no. 3) provides the only indication that the Bruckbergs and Haunsbergs were kinsmen of the Falkensteins. In fact, we do not know how they were related, and their kinship was of no practical consequence. A member of the Bruckberg family, Albero, was mentioned only once in the codex, significantly enough, when he witnessed the count-palatine's decision at Rechtmehring (no. 131). The Haunsbergs are also conspicuous by their absence. There is only a single reference to a Haunsberg in the codex (no. 114). While Siboto did enfeoff a Haunsberg ministerial, Witigo, with a hide and a meadow (nos. 106, 143), he granted fiefs to the ministerials of other lords as well. For their part, the Falkensteins were not included in the affairs of their distant relatives. Siboto V was not present or named in 1211, for instance, when Archbishop Eberhard I1 of Salzburg (1200-1246) purchased Haunsberg from its last lord, Gottschalk,16or when Duke Leopold VI of Austria, who had obtained Linz from Gottschalk,17 renounced his claims to the castle

"L'Handpal," 184-224; Th. Ilgen, "Zum Hantgemal," MOG 28 (1907): 561-576; and Rudolf Sohm, "Uber das Hantgemal," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungftir Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 30 (1909): 103-116. Cyrographum was also used in the Codex in its conventional sense (nos. 103, 110). On this point, see Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 58*-59*. l4 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 215. The word cometia was used in Bavaria in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to mean Gericht rather than Grafschaft. See, for instance, J. E. von Koch-Stemfeld, "Urkunden von Berchtesgaden," Salzburg und Berchtesgaden ~n historisch-statistisch-geographisch-und staatsokonomischen Beytriigen, 2 vols. (Salzburg, 1810), 2: 49-50, no. 29, where the Gutrats referred to their comitia of Grafengaden. In German lists of the Gutrats' fiefs, the word Gericht was employed. Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 4: 247-248, no. 208 and 271-272, no. 231. For further information, see Eduard Richter, "Untersuchungen zur historischen Geographic des ehemaligen Hochstiftes Salzburg und seiner Nachbargebiete," Mitteilungen des Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, supplementary vol. 1 (Innsbmck, 1885): 679-682. l6 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3: 149-150, no. 645. " Karl Lechner, Die Babenberger: Markgrafen und Herzoge von ~ s t e r r e i c h976-1246, VerBffentlichungen des Instituts fiir osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 23 (Vienna, 1976), 212.

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

of Haunsberg.18It is thus significant that Siboto IV even remembered that the Haunsbergs and the Bruckbergs were his distant relatives. The memory of their common ancestry was clearly attached to their common Hantgemal. The division of the sip that shared the Hantgemal in Geislbach into three, widely separated lineages, whose chief lordships were located along the Isar, Inn, Salzach, and Danube, is a classic example of the formation of distinct lineages among the Bavarian nobility in the course of the eleventh century. Third, von Dungern identified several possible members of that sip. He pointed out that several men named Rudolph and Gerold, names bome, respectively, by Siboto IV's father and by Gertrude of Weyam's alleged grandfather, lived in the vicinity of Geislbach in the eleventh c e n t ~ r y .A ' ~Gerold and a Rudolph were listed together as witnesses when the nobleman, Adalo, gave the collegiate church of St. Castulus in Moosburg his alod and chapel located in Kienraching in the parish of Dorfen." Von Dungern did not explain why he dated this notice around 1037. Sometime between 1057 and 1078, Count Pilgrim, the brother of the count-palatine of Bavaria, gave the bishopric of Freising his property situated in Mauggen, northwest of Geislbach, through the hand of his knight Rudolph." The archdeacon Gerold and his brothers Otbert and Rudolph served as witnesses sometime between 1098 and 1137, when Freising received some predial property at Pfaffing." Von Dungern identified this Pfaffing as the Pfaffing located west of Geislbach, but the editor of the notice pointed out that there were fifteen Pfaffings in Upper Bavaria. Most important and intriguing of all, the nobleman Rudolph, whose wife was named Adelaide and whose son was also named Rudolph, gave the cathedral chapter of Freising sometime between 1078 and 1085 his proprietary church in Margarethenried, which he subsequently endowed. The endowment included some property in Biburg in the parish of Lengdorf, south of Geislbach, and more significantly, a manor in Weyam itself. Rudolph later purchased an additional property called Oberndorf in the parish of Priel, which he entrusted to Henry of Moosburg. Seven years later Count Siboto of Weyarn headed the list of witnesses when Henry gave this property, as Rudolph had directed, to Freising as part of the endowment of the church in Margarethenried (northeast of F r e i ~ i n g ) . ~ ~ On the basis of this evidence, von Dungern concluded that the Rudolph who gave Margarethenried to Freising was the father-in-law of Siboto II.24 Siboto I1 would thus have inherited Weyam, where Rudolph owned a Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3: 146-149, no. 645. Von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch, 74-75. Zo Max Freiherr von Freyberg, ed., "Traditions-Codex des Collegiatsstifts St. Castulus in Moosburg," Oberbayerisches Archiv fur vaterliindische Geschichte 2 (1840): 5, no. 9. Traditionen Freising, 2: 459, no. 1617.

Z 2 Ibid., 354, no. 1518.

23 Ibid., 474-477, no. 1648.

24 Von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch, 74.

l9

SIBOTO IV'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY

39

TABLE4. Von Dungern's Reconstruction of Gertrude of Weyarn's Ancestry Patto Rudolph m. Adelaide I

manor, from Rudolph rather than from his father Siboto I. If von Dungem's reconstruction of the Weyarn genealogy were correct, Siboto 11's wife, Adelaide, would have been named after her mother, the wife of Rudolph, and Rudolph rather than the Gerold whom Siboto IV included in his genealogy would have been the matemal grandfather of Gertrude of Weyarn. Table 4 presents von Dungem's reconstruction of Gertrude's ancestry. It should be pointed out, however, that Tyroller and Noichl, who were familiar with von Dungem's work, ignored this evidence in their presentation of the Weyam-Falkenstein genealogy, presumably because they found it less than convincing. Tyroller identified Siboto 11's wife Adelaide, instead, as we have already seen, as the sister of Count Berengar I1 of Sulzbach. I have suggested that she might have been the daughter of the Gerold whom Siboto IV called his mother's grandfather. The problem with von Dungern's reconstruction of the Weyam ancestry is that it assumes that Siboto IV's father Rudolph was related in some way to the Gerold whom Siboto called his mother's grandfather. That is why von Dungern cited the various instances where Gerolds and Rudolphs appear together in an apparent association with Geislbach. We know, however, that the common ancestor of Rudolph of Falkenstein and Gertrude of Weyam was Patto of Dilching, who was Rudolph's grandfather and the father or fatherin-law of Gertrude's paternal grandfather, Siboto I. Von Dungem created in effect a second common ancestor for Gertrude and Rudolph. Even worse, von Dungern's reconstruction of the Weyarn ancestry excludes Gerold from Gertrude's ancestry. If Gerold was not Gertrude's matemal grandfather, there is no reason to search for links between Gerolds and Rudolphs since there is no other obvious place for a Gerold in Siboto IV's matemal ancestry. Nevertheless, the evidence von Dungem uncovered is tantalizing, but too many pieces are missing to reconstruct the puzzle. It is possible that von Dungem may have discovered some of Siboto IV's distant kinsmen and may thus have provided some independent proof for the existence of the sip that shared a common Hantgemal in Geislbach. All of this is, however, far from certain. Fourth, Philipp Heck pointed out already in 1907 that Siboto was clearly worried that his sons might not be familiar with the location of their

40

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

Hantgemal. Heck concluded that a property whose location could so easily be forgotten could not have been the symbol of a family's claim to freedom and nobility, but was simply the place of origin (Heimat) of a lineage.25 While Heck's theory gained few, if any, adherents, his observations about Siboto's concern are perceptive. The two passages in the codex indicate that there was considerable uncertainty about the precise location of the Hantgemal, the identity of its co-owners, and the rules for its inheritance. Siboto's statements about his Hantgemal show that three, widely scattered lineages of Bavarian nobles were still conscious in the mid-twelfth century of their common ancestry, even if we, and possibly they, can no longer ascertain the exact nature of their kinship. That knowledge was linked to the possession of a common Hantgemal, the last legacy of the great noble sips of earlier centuries. But as the apparent confusion about the location of the Hantgemal, the identity of its co-owners, and the rules for its inheritance also demonstrates, the memory of the nobles' common ancestry was rapidly fading as they increasingly perceived themselves as members of distinct lineages. Indeed, the Hantgemal itself may have been transformed, as the Welfs' concern about their ancestry suggests, from the earnest of a sip's freedom into a symbol of the lineage. The Welfs' Knowledge of Their Ancestry Schmid has studied the Welfs' search for their roots in the twelfth According to the Genealogia Welforum, which was written shortly ~entury.'~ before the death of Duke Henry the Black of Bavaria (d. 1126),27the founder of the Welf lineage was Eticho, who had two children: Henry and Hildegard, the wife of the Emperor Louis the Stammerer. After Henry paid homage to the emperor, Eticho founded a monastery in the Amrnergau, where he died. Henry transferred the monks to Altomiinster and later to Weingarten, the Welfs' dynastic monastery.'* This presentation of the Welf's genealogy is astonishing, as Schmid points out, for several reasons. First, the West Frankish king, Louis I1 (877-879), was never crowned emperor; nor was he ever married to a Hildegard. Second, Henry with the Golden Plough, the founder of Weingarten, lived in the first half of the tenth century. Third, the Genealogia Welforum ignored the Welfs' distinguished ninth-century West Frankish and Burgundian ancestors and kinsmen, including Count Welf, the first known member of the clan, and his daughter Judith, who married Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious.29 The Saxon Annalist, who wrote in the 1130s, had obtained more accurate information about the Welfs' forebear^.^' According to this source, there 25 Heck, "Das Hantgemal des Codex Falkensteinensis," 11-12. See the similar comments by Balon, "L'Handgemal," 214. 26 Schmid, "Welfisches Selbstverstandnis," 389-416. 27 Ibid., 392. 28 Genealogia Welforum, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH Scriptores 13 (Hanover, 1881), 733. 29 For a genealogy of the Welfs, see Bouchard, "Origins of the French Nobility," 510. 30 Schmid, "Welfisches Selbstverstandnis," 392-394.

SIBOTO IV'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY

41

was a Bavarian magnate of outstanding liberty ("egregie libertatis princeps") who had two names, Eticho and Welf. This Eticho-Welf was so proud of his free status that he refused to pay homage to the emperor and had prohibited his son Henry from doing so. Henry's sister Judith, who had married Louis the Pious, persuaded her brother, however, to become the emperor's vassal in exchange for all the land Henry could encircle with his plough during the noon hour in Swabia. Carrying a golden model of a plough, Henry rode around a large territory by changing horses several times and thus acquired Ravensburg and his sobriquet. The incensed Eticho refused thereafter to talk to his son and spent the remainder of his life with twelve loyal followers in the mountains. The Saxon Annalist added that, after Duke Henry the Black heard the story of Eticho-Welf, he sought Eticho's grave, opened it to test the truth of the tale, and then built a church on the site.31Schmid explains that the Saxon Annalist, who had learned of Count Welf and of Judith's marriage to Louis the Pious, resolved the contradictory accounts of the Welfs' ancestry by equating Welf with Eticho. These accounts of the Welfs' origins show that an ancestor of distinguished liberty, his burial place, and the dynastic monastery of Weingarten were linked in the family traditions of the Welfs in the twelfth century. The grave of the stem Eticho, the embodiment of the famed Welf pride, could easily have served as a symbol of the Welfs' free and noble ancestry, that is, as their Hantgemal, their predium libertatis. Many scholars believe in fact that the Hantgemal was the site of a sip's ancestral graves and that this sacred place was often turned into a dynastic monastery. Ebersberg, Melk, Reichersberg, Scheyern, and Weyarn itself have been identified as monasteries of this type.32AS we have seen in the first chapter, Schmid argues that the foundation of such dynastic monasteries was one manifestation of the transformation of the great noble sips into distinct lineages. It is noteworthy that the count-palatine's decision that the noble hide in Geislbach was to be inherited by the senior member of the lineage ("eo quod senior in generatione illa videatur") is similar to the advocatory clause in the charters and traditions of dynastic monasteries. When Sigehard, the patriarch of Aquileia (1068-1077), introduced the Gorze customs into his ancestral monastery of Michaelbeuern, north of Salzburg in 1072, he stipulated, for example, that the patriarch's nephew, Count Sigehard I of Burghausen, was to be the advocate of Michaelbeuern and that "ipsa defensio maneret in ipsa generatione, a seniore ipsius cognationis qui esset l a i ~ u s . "The ~ ~ Hantgemal in its guise as a Hauskloster was thus changed from the symbolic earnest of the freedom of a noble sip into the focal point of a particular lineage's identity. 3 1 A n n a l i ~ tSaxo a a. 741-1139, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH Scriptores 6 (Hanover, 1844), 764. Karl Bosl, "Die aristokratische Shvktur der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft," Die Gesellschaft in der Geschichte des Mittelalters (Gottingen, 1966), 40; Prinz, "Bayems Adel," 113; Stormer, Friiher Adel, 367; and Weber, "Handgemal," 1963-1964. 33 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1: 771-774, no. l a . 32

42

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

While many Bavarian noblemen built a monastery or at least a church on the site of their Hantgemal, Siboto IV did not. Since Geislbach was situated outside of Siboto's sphere of influence, he may have lacked the power, the financial means, or the reason to do so, particularly if the foundation of a dynastic monastery would have meant conflict with the other lineages who shared the same Hantgemal. Besides, Siboto already possessed a suitable dynastic house in Weyam. Nevertheless, Siboto's interest in his genealogy made him anxious that his sons not forget the location of their Hantgemal. This was a real fear because the Falkensteins, unlike other Bavarian lineages, had not established a dynastic monastery at the site of their ancestral Hantgemal. Siboto's preoccupation with his Hantgemal, like Duke Henry's long search for Eticho's grave, was the product of the Bavarian nobility's heightened interest in its ancestry. Patrilineal Consciousness among the Weyams and Falkensteins Investigation of Siboto's own knowledge of his ancestry reveals that he was a descendant of the sip that shared a common Hantgemal in Geislbach. This sip had divided in the eleventh century into three separate lineages: the Bruckbergs, Haunsbergs, and Weyam-Falkensteins, who still vaguely remembered their common ancestry in the second half of the twelfth century. Did the Weyarns and Falkensteins think and act like patrilineal lineages in the period between roughly 1050 and 1150? The Weyarns' behavior fits the pattern described by Schmid for the formation of patrilineal lineages. Royal patronage had provided the initial impetus for the development of the Weyam-Falkenstein lineage. Patto was able to use his position as the advocate of Tegemsee to acquire a lordship in colonial territory for his son Herrand, while the senior branch of the lineage held the advocacy of Tegemsee on several occasions during the next century. The Weyams' acquisition and/or construction of the castle of Weyam, a name they first employed sometime before 1077, further stimulated their family consciousness. This can be seen by their adoption of the distinctive leading name Siboto and later by Weyam's conversion into a collegiate church. It is intriguing that Siboto IV identified a Gerold rather than Siboto I as his mother's grandfather. If Gerold was, as I have suggested, Gertrude's maternal grandfather, his inclusion in the genealogy and Siboto I's exclusion would provide fairly strong evidence that Gerold had been the original owner of Weyam and that the memories of a lineage tended to be fixed, as Schmid maintained, upon its lordship. If I am right, it is worth noting that the Weyams' family identity focused on a lordship they had acquired from an heiress, Siboto 11's wife, Adelaide. In the same way, the German Welfs remembered the ancestor, Henry of the Golden Plough, who had founded their Swabian lordship, but forgot their famous West Frankish and Burgunhan ancestors and kinsmen, including the daughter-in-law of C h a r l e m a g ~ ~ e . ~ ~ 34

Schmid, "Welfisches Selbstverstandnis," 402-405.

SIBOTO IV'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ANCESTRY

43

The association of a lineage with its lordship may offer an additional explanation for Siboto's selective memories about Patto, namely, why he listed Patto among his paternal, but not his maternal ancestors. While Siboto chd not want to draw attention to his parents' consanguineous marriage, an endogamous union that was itself the product of his forebears' heightened family consciousness, Patto's chief importance to Siboto IV was as the founder of the lordship of Hernstein rather than as the advocate of Tegernsee, an office the Weyarn-Falkensteins never held again after 1121. There was thus no reason to mention the embarrassing fact that Patto had also been one of Gertrude's ancestors. It is hard to perceive, on the other hand, any real sense of family identity among Siboto IV's paternal ancestors and kinsmen, except possibly for the names of their castles, Falkenstein and Hernstein, which were named, respectively, after a heraldic animal and Herrand I. The early Falkensteins had not developed any of the characteristics of a clearly defined patrilineal lineage. Each of them bore a different first name: Patto, Herrand, Rudolph, Reginold, and Wolfker; and they employed three different surnames in a span of thirty years: Falkenstein, Griggingen, and Hernstein. The choice of the name Herrand for Siboto IV's younger brother, who was obviously named after his paternal grandfather, is the first clear sign that the Falkensteins were beginning to think in such terms, approximately fifty years after such an outlook can be detected among the Weyarns. The Falkensteins' widely scattered property holdings in Bavaria and Lower Austria may have made it more difficult for them than the Weyarns who were the rulers of a compact lordship to consolidate their lordships and to become conscious of their identity. It is thus a misleading, if necessary, scholarly convention, based on the later history of the lineage, to identify Siboto's paternal ancestors as the Falkensteins. Although Siboto IV mentioned them first in his genealogy, the later Falkensteins, like the Welf-Estes and the Habsburg-Lorraines, assumed, as their adoption of the leading name Siboto shows, the identity and status of their more distinguished maternal ancestors who were of comital rank. As we shall see in chapter five, they seem to have preferred the name Neuburg to Falkenstein. Indeed, Rudolph's choice of the name Siboto for his older son was itself a claim to the Weyarn inheritance. Under the circumstances, it would be more accurate to see Siboto IV as the heir of the Weyarns than the Falkensteins. The irony is that the Weyarns may themselves have acquired Weyarn from a maternal ancestor. Stormer's contention that twelfth-century nobles often identified with their more distinguished maternal ancestors is thus borne out. As David Herlihy has pointed out, a patrilineal family structure was superimposed in the high Middle Ages upon an earlier cognate or bilateral one and both ways of thinking can be detected in the same family.35We must be careful not to impose our own patrilineal perceptions about family structure on the past. 35 David Herlihy, "The Making of the Medieval Family: Symmetry, Structure, Sentiment." Paper delivered at the Midwest Medieval Conference at Purdue University, 9 October 1982.

44

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

Yet Siboto's presentation of his genealogy, the count-palatine's decision that the Hantgemal was to be inherited by the senior member of the lineage, the family portrait Siboto included in the codex, and the very preparation of the codex to protect Siboto's and h s son's patrimony indicate that Siboto thought of himself as the head of a patrilineal lineage. As we shall see, he acted accordingly in his dealings with his daughters, nephews, and niece. Siboto's behavior suggests that the new mentality was beginning to predominate among the Bavarian nobility in the second half of the twelfth century.

IV. THE PATERFAMILIAS Family Strategies

I

n his revised study of the nobility of the Miconnais, Duby identified two family strateges that the emerging patrilineal lineages in that county adopted in the eleventh century. The first was a deliberate effort to limit a sister's or daughter's share of the family property, which would inevitably pass to her husband's lineage. At the same time, men tried to marry heiresses, whose inheritance would be added to their own patrimony. Second, while younger sons were not disinherited, they rarely married. If they did, they generally remained childless. In either case, their share of the family patrimony eventually reverted to the senior branch of the lineage.' A similar pattern of behavior can be observed in Siboto IV's relations with his wife, daughters, nephews, and niece. The Modling Inheritance Siboto's own parents had married, as we have seen, to prevent the dismemberment of the Weyam-Falkenstein patrimony. The situation is less clear in the case of Siboto's own marriage to Hildegard of Modling. She had twin brothers, Kuno V and Kuno VI, who died without heirs in 1205 and before 1196, respectively.' We do not know whether Siboto had any reason to hope that this might occur when he married Hildegard fifty years earlier. It is worth noting, however, that Siboto's relations with his father-in-law, whom he selected as the guardian of his sons (no. I), and his brother-in-law Kuno V, whom he appointed on several occasions as his proctor (nos. 171, 175, 178), were good. The name of Siboto's older son, Kuno, was itself a claim to the Modling inheritance. When Kuno IV died in 1181, Siboto, Hildegard, and their sons did in fact unsuccessfully claim the castle of Modling and her father's retainers (no. 163).One wonders why they thought their suit had any chance of success as long as her brothers were still alive. In the end, the Falkensteins proved too weak to prevent the duke of Bavaria and the archbishop of Salzburg from absorbing the Modling inheritan~e.~ Siboto's Daughters The only reason we know that Siboto had more than one daughter is that he specifically excluded his daughters from receiving any share of

' Duby, "Lineage, nobility and knighthood,"

71-75; and idem, Medieval Marriage, 9-12. Flohrschiitz, "Die Vogte von Modling," 5 and 138-140. ' Ibid., 138-142; and below, p. 56.

45

46

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

the property in Austria that he had purchased from his niece in 1190 (no. 171). He did not mention his daughters in his genealogy, and he did not have them depicted in the family portrait, the oldest known group picture of a family, which he placed at the beginning of the codex.4 This portrait was made, as the inscription shows5before the count's departure for Italy and portrays him, identified as "Dominus Siboto comes," Hildegard, and their half-grown sons, Kuno and Siboto V, seated on a bench. He made no provision for his daughters when he divided his fiefs and various other properties between his sons (nos. 106, 167). When he conferred the lordship of Hernstein and his other holdings in Austria to his wife and sons, he stipulated, however, that Kuno and Siboto V were to provide one of their sisters with a suitable dowry if he died before she married (no. 142). Siboto required the husband of one of the girls, the Austrian nobleman, Engelschalk of Wasen, to assign his entire estate, including his ancestral castle, to his wife as her widow's dower. The marriage contract, which was placed in the codex, was witnessed by thirteen nobles and forty-eight ministerials, an indication that Siboto attached great importance to this particular agreement (no. 143). Siboto was thus concerned about his daughters' well-being, but he did not consider them to be members of his own lineage and he could provide for them only at the expense of his own and his sons' patrimony. Siboto's daughters were, viewed from this perspective, a liability. Siboto's Uncle, Nephews, and Niece Siboto's younger brother Herrand I1 died around 1155. He was survived by his widow Sophia, who subsequently married Count Conrad I1 of Peilstein, and three small children: Siboto of Antwort, Herrand 111, and Judith. Shortly thereafter, Siboto's paternal uncle Wolfker also died. It took Siboto thirty-five years to regain their shares of the Weyarn-Falkenstein patrimony. Although Siboto had inherited several properties in Lower Austria from his brother (no. 102), he immediately claimed a number of other men and properties that had belonged to Herrand. Siboto's uncle, friends (such friends were often in fact kinsmen), vassals, and ministerials persuaded Siboto to defer his complaints against his nephews until they attained their majority. Wolfker, who had no legitimate, noble-born sons of his own, then intervened on behalf of his great-nephews and arranged a settlement between Siboto and Herrand's sons (no. 115). Wolfker entrusted his share of the lordship of Hernstein and Rudolph's share, which had apparently been acquired by Wolfker rather than by Siboto IV, some serfs, and an alod in Bavaria to Count Gebhard of Burghausen, who was to hold them in trust for Siboto IV and his sons (no. 114). In return, Siboto Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 29*-30". Noichl reproduced the pomait as Tafel 1. For the text, see the last section of chapter one.

THE PATERFAMILIAS

47

dropped his suit against his nephews. Wolfker also placed a number of men and alods in Bavaria in the custody of the count-palatine, Otto of Wittelsbach, who was to serve as the trustee for Wolfker's great-nephew Siboto of Antwort (no. 136). This out-of-court settlement assured that the senior branch of the dynasty would inherit Wolfker's share of the lordship of Hernstein after his death. One wonders if Siboto did not deliberately harass his nephews to force them and their guardians as well as Wolfker to accept this disposition of the latter's estate. After Wolfker's death, Archbishop Eberhard I of Salzburg (1147-1 164) enfeoffed Siboto on 12 September 1158, with the advocacy of Herren~hiemsee.~ Wolfker had in all likelihood succeeded Siboto I1 as the advocate because Siboto IV had been a minor when his grandfather and father had renounced the world (see chapter two). The history of the margraves of Styria provides a comparable and contemporary example of an uncle serving as an advocate during the minority of his nephew. Count Bernhard of Marburg-Spanheim (d. 1147), who had married the sister of Margrave Leopold (1122-1 129), was the advocate of the Benedictine monasteries of St. Lambrecht and Ossiach during the minority of Leopold's son, Margrave Otakar I11 (1129-1 164).7When the uncle died, the advocacy reverted to the nephew who continued the lineage. After Siboto of Antwort attained his majority around 1165, he and Siboto IV formally divided their alods, fiefs, and men and renounced their claims to the other's share of the patrimony (no. 118). Shortly after the count's return from Italy, his nephew pledged his alod in Schlicht, near Hartmannsberg, to his uncle (no. 135). Around 1170, the two men once again settled their disputes over the division of the inheritance. Siboto of Antwort named his uncle and his cousins, Kuno and Siboto V, as his heirs if he should die without a son, promised to help his uncle faithfully against all his enemies, and pledged properties worth sixty pounds as surety for the implementation of his promises. It was explicitly indicated in the agreement that Siboto of Antwort's mother, brother, and sister, who had been excluded in the agreement, were still alive when he named his uncle and cousins as his heirs (no. 136). Siboto inherited his nephew's estate shortly thereafter. The count's relations with his brother's widow, Sophia of Peilstein, and with Herrand 11's surviving son, Herrand 111, were tense. Sophia and Herrand I11 gave Gottweig, for example, a manor in Busendorf, Lower Austria, sometime between 1173 and 1176,' but added that if anyone justly challenged the gift, the abbey was to receive instead an alod located at Wol-

Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 462-465, no. 333.

' Heinz Dopsch, "Die steirischen Otakare. Zu ihrer Herkunft und ihren dynastischen Verbindungen," in Das Werden der Steiermark: Die Zeit der Traungauer, ed. Gerhard Pferschy (Graz, 1980), 116-1 17. Traditionsbucher Gottweig, 515-516, no. 381.

48

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

lersdorf, east of Hernsteing The most likely plaintiff was Siboto IV. Shortly before her death on March 12,1176, Sophia pledged a manor at Flintsbach near Falkenstein to Siboto (no. 149) and renounced any claims she had advanced on her sons' behalf against the count (no. 148). During the campaign of Duke Henry of Austria against Bohemia in the autumn of 1176, Sophia's widowed husband, Count Conrad of Peilstein, renounced the claims he had raised to Hernstein on behalf of his wife, his stepchildren, and Nizo of Raitenbuch, the husband of Conrad's stepdaughter, Judith of Hemstein (nos. 150, 151). At the same time, Herrand I11 pledged his entire patrimony, both people and lands, to Siboto IV for 60s. After paying his nephew 30s in coins and unminted silver, Siboto took possession of his nephew's property (no. 152). Siboto's niece, Judith, who had married Nizo of Raitenbuch, a ministerial of the bishop of Regensburg, surrendered her rights to the castles of Falkenstein and Hemstein in 1182. It was stipulated that Siboto was to have sole possession of Judith's property in his lifetime and that it was to be divided equally between his sons after his death (nos. 157-160). On 13 June 1190, Judith, her second husband, Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg, their son, Albero Wolf V, and the children of Judith's first marriage, Conrad of Raitenbuch and his unnamed sister, sold to Siboto IV and his sons for 220s almost all of the property they possessed in Austria (no. 171). The Bocksbergs and Raitenbuchs subsequently also sold to Siboto for an additional 80s whatever they possessed in Peissenberg, west of the Stamberger See in Upper Bavaria (no. 172). Siboto IV stipulated that his sons were to divide his property equally after his death (nos. 106, 142, 160, 167), but Kuno, unmarried, died before his father on the Third Crusade, and his younger brother Siboto V married only after it became clear that Kuno would never return from the Holy Land. Siboto and his sons thus never really faced the problem that a permanent division of the patrimony would have posed. I suspect, however, that Siboto V would not have married if his older brother had lived and that Siboto V's share of the inheritance would consequently have reverted to the senior branch of the lineage. This investigation of Siboto's dealings with his relatives has shown that he behaved as the head of a patrilineal lineage. Like the nobles of the Miconnais, he pursued a deliberate policy for thirty-five years of regaining properties and rights that had been acquired by his paternal uncle, his younger brother, and his nephews and niece. Siboto was successful in large measure because Wolfker, Siboto of Antwort, and Herrand I11 accepted, however reluctantly, their subordinate position within the lineage and remained either childless or left no legitimate, noble-born heir. Their acceptance of their lot demonstrates how deeply rooted the new concept of a patrilineal family structure had become among the Bavarian nobility Ibid., 516-517, no. 382.

THE PATERFAMILIAS

49

by the second half of the twelfth century. To achieve his goal, Siboto was willing to treat his young, fatherless nephews rather harshly; and it had required the intervention of the boys' great-uncle Wolfker to save their inheritance. Maternal and Paternal Uncles Maternal uncles have been called "a kind of 'male mother,' " who played a large role in the education of their sister's sons in the Middle Ages." Charlemagne's and Roland's mutual devotion in The Song of Roland is the classic literary example. The story was so appealing because it reflected, albeit in an exaggerated form, social reality. A similar bond existed between Reginold, Rudolph, and Wolfker of Falkenstein and their sister's sons, Rudolph and Herrand of Pottenstein, who had obviously been named after their mother's brother and father and who, as mentioned in chapter two, appeared as witnesses with their maternal uncles. It is not difficult to explain why maternal uncles assumed such a large role in the lives of their nephews, while paternal uncles, like Siboto IV or Kings John and Richard I11 of England, were often cast, rightly or wrongly, as villains. While many noblemen, like Rudolph of Falkenstein or Siboto V, married late, women had to marry at an early age if they hoped to bear children. A mother's brother was thus likely to be considerably younger than a father's brother and consequently was apt to provide a better role model for an adolescent than a paternal uncle. This was particularly true if the father was dead and/or if the mother, as was often the case, came from a more illustrious family than the father." Beyond that, while a man could inherit property from both his paternal and maternal uncles, only a paternal uncle could normally inherit property from his nephew. The formation of patrilineal lineages created, in other words, a rivalry between paternal uncles and their nephews over the division of the family patrimony that did not exist in the case of a maternal uncle.'' It may not be an accident that while Latin could distinguish clearly between a patruus and an avunculus, the standard designation for an uncle in modem English, French, and German is derived from the latter word. Siboto IV's attitude toward his daughters and his harsh treatment of his nephews thus provide clear evidence that he not only perceived himself as the head of a patrilineal lineage, but that he also behaved as one. lo Mary Martin McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries," in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York, 1974), p. 178, n. 217. Duby, Medieval Marriage, p. 11, observes that men in the mamage market generally tried to obtain wives who came from a family more distinguished than their own. This explains why the genealogical literature so often emphasized the nobility of the mother's family. Bouchard, "Origins of the French Nobility," 509 and 520-521, points out that it was common for a parvenu to marry into a family higher in the social hierarchy than his own. l 2 Duby, Medieval Marriage, 5-6, believes that the mother's lineage sought compensation for the loss of the mother by establishing close ties to her children.

50

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN The Changing Meaning of Familia

The best proof that a fundamental change had occurred in the structure and self-perception of the Bavarian nobility may be that the word familia had acquired a new meaning. The word was used in one entry in the Codex Falkensteinensis (no. 171) in both its classical and modern sense. When Siboto's niece Judith, her second husband, and her children sold her Austrian possessions to the count, it was indicated that the purchase included "qu~cumquepossederant in Austria in farnilia vel mancipiis," that is, her servile dependents. Frederick of Wolflkofen, who was acting as the sellers' proctor, then entrusted the property to Kuno V of Modling "rogatu predict: matris famili: %tin et filii eius C h r a d i et sororis ipsius." Judith had quite obviously not sold herself. Words, like men, change with the times.

V. FIRST NAMES AND SURNAMES Legitimate Sons

A

lthough table 1 with its succession of Sibotos seems to offer positive proof that the Falkensteins possessed a clearly defined family identity, the Falkensteins' choice of first names for their children and their adoption of a surname cannot be used as evidence that they perceived of themselves as members of a patrilineal lineage in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As we have seen, the name Siboto entered the genealogy only when Rudolph named his older son after his maternal grandfather; and it is more appropriate to regard Siboto IV as the heir of the Weyarns than the Falkensteins. Siboto IV named his older son in turn after his maternal grandfather, Kuno IV of Modling. If Kuno rather than his younger brother, Siboto V, had continued the lineage, it is quite possible that the Falkensteins would have dropped the name Siboto, just as they had earlier abandoned the name Herrand, which was confined to the cadet branch of the lineage. While Siboto V did name his older son Siboto,' his younger son Conrad had obviously been named after his maternal grandfather, Count Conrad I1 of Valley (no. 175). The Falkensteins' choice of first names for their legitimate sons thus really points to the continued importance of a wife's and mother's relatives in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Indeed, if a woman was an heiress, her husband was likely to name his eldest son after her father as a way of asserting the son's right to his mother's inheritance. As the names of Siboto IV's cousins, Rudolph and Herrand of Pottenstein, the sons of Rudolph of Falkenstein's sister, Adelaide, indicate, the Falkensteins were not the only noble family who identified and associated with their maternal kinsmen. Austrian and Bavarian noble families did employ leading names, but it could just as easily be a name associated with their maternal as their paternal forebears. Bastard Sons The names borne by the Weyarns' and Falkensteins' bastards or nonnoble sons are also revealing. As mentioned in chapter two, Siboto I1 was

' The conclusion that Siboto VI was the older son of Siboto V is based on the following evidence: Siboto VI and his parents, but not Conrad, were identified in one notice as benefactors of Herrenchiemsee, Monurnenta Boica, 2: 365, no. 142. (The notice is wrongly dated. See below n. 1:28.) Siboto rather than Conrad provided his sister with a dowry (Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I, 167-169, no. 5); and Siboto VI was listed first when both brothers were mentioned by name (ibid., 169, no. 6; and Monurnenta Wittelsbacensia: Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Hauses Wittelsbach, ed. Franz Michael Withnann, Quellen und Erorterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte 5 [Munich, 18571, 257-258, no. 105).

52

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

the father of an illegitimate son, Berthold of Mormoosen; and Wolfker had two illegitimate and/or non-noble sons, Otto of Hernstein and Lazarus of Wolfratshausen. None of these men bore a leading name associated with the counts of Weyarn or Falkenstein, though Berthold did name his own son Siboto.' Indeed, the choice of the name Lazarus can only be described as bizarre. It was not customary to use New Testament names, let alone the outlanhsh name Lazarus, in twelfth-century Bavaria and I1 and Wolfker must have selected these names deliberately A ~ s t r i aSiboto .~ to indicate that these children were not to be viewed as members of their lineage; yet the very fact that we even know of the existence of these bastards or non-noble sons shows that no attempt was made to conceal their pat ern it^.^ Otto and Lazarus were in fact closely associated with their noble cousin. Siboto IV appointed Otto as one of the five men who were to advise and to assist Kuno of Modling if the count died in Italy (no. 1); and Lazarus was often named as a witness in entries in the codex (nos. 120b, 122, 134a/b, 140,142,143,144a) and had been enfeoffedby Siboto (no. 2). While Siboto's servile uncle Berthold was not mentioned in the codex, the count did grant his ministerial cousin, Siboto of Mormoosen, ten hides as a fief (no. 106). The choice of a first name was thus a matter of considerable importance, but the selection could indicate a claim to a maternal inheritance or the exclusion of a bastard as well as membership in a patrilineal lineage. The Adoption of Surnames Bouchard has pointed out in her study of the lords of Seignelay, a noble family in the Auxerrois, that Seignelay was not a true hereditary patronym, but merely a cognomen indicating geographical origin. Some members of the Seignelay lineage did not use the patronym, while their retainers who lived in the castle or village of Seignelay often did. Bouchard believes, therefore, that the distinguishing characteristic of this French lineage was not its cognomen, but rather the repetition of certain distinctive Christian names, which were normally given to the eldest son.5 The same thing can be said with some modifications about the Falkensteins. While they preferred the leading name Siboto, they were also inclined to adopt, as we have just seen, leading names associated with their maternal ancestors.

Berthold was married to a Benedicta. Schenkungsbuch Berchtesgaden, 258, no. 34. Benedicta of Mormoosen was identified in turn as the mother of Siboto of Mormoosen (Monurnenta Boica, 2: 305, no. 75). The names of thousands of individuals are listed, for instance, in the index to volume one of the Salzburger Urkundenbuch. Only two Johns, probably the same person, who lived in the twelfth century, are listed; and no one named Peter, Paul, or let alone Lazarus is mentioned. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 93-96, points out that the sexual prowess of men was acclaimed as a sign of virility. At least twenty-three bastards attended the funeral of Count Baldwin I1 of Guines in 1206, a fact that was recorded with some pride. Bouchard, "Structure of a Twelfth-Century Family," 44-49.

FIRST NAMES AND SURNAMES

More important, the same individual often employed several different surnames, generally the cognomen that best identified him in a particular area or context. In general, it can be said that Siboto IV and his sons and grandsons were known as the counts of Falkenstein or Neuburg in Bavaria, occasionally as the counts of Hartmannsberg in Herrenchiemsee, and as the counts of Hernstein in Austria. In other words, the "Falkensteins" never acquired a true surname; their multiple surnames were simply cognomina indicating the lineage's most visible center of power in a particular area. As far as the Falkensteins are concerned, Schmid is wrong about such designations becoming fixed and true surnames in the course of the twelfth century. The Surnames of Siboto's Ancestors and Relatives Siboto I or Siboto I1 had adopted the surname Weyarn by 1077,6 but they rarely employed the name.7 Everyone in Tegernsee knew who the comes or preses Siboto was. Siboto IV was identified on two occasions as Count Siboto of Weyarn after Weyarn had been turned into a collegiate church.' Old habits died s10wly.~ It has already been pointed out that Herrand I and his sons employed three different surnames in the first three decades of the twelfth century: Falkenstein, Griggingen, and Hernstein." Siboto IV's younger brother,

Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1: 287-288, no. 71. 'The surname appears in the following places: Monurnenta Boica, 2: 285-295, nos. 8, 15, and 43; Schenkungsbuch Berchtesgaden, 258, no. 34; Traditionen Freising, 2: 474-477, no. 1648e; and Traditionen Tegernsee, 129-141, nos. 165, 175, and 177. It was not used in most of the entries in the Traditionsbuch of Tegemsee. Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 1: 621, no. 78; and Monurnenta Boica, 2: 330-331, no. 155. The latter document involved Ortolf, a knight of the Lady Sophia, the wife of Bemhard of Route. The first witness was Siboto, the son of Count Siboto of Weyam, who could have been either Siboto 111, who was dead by 1133, or Siboto V, who attained his majority around 1170. It is dated ca. 1150 in the Monurnenta Boica, a date that is clearly wrong. A Bemhard of RBte is mentioned twice in the Traditionen Tegernsee between 1149 and 1155 (202-206, nos. 268 and 271); and a Bemhard of Rute and his son Bemhard served as witnesses in the Traditionen Schaftlarn around 1160 (110, no. 105).The witnesses included: Henry Zophilman, who served as a witness around 1175/76 (Codex Falkensteinensis, nos. 148, 149); Ortwin of Trautersdorf, who served as a witness around 1170 (ibid., no. 145); Wemher Feuerstein, who was mentioned between ca. 1145 and ca. 1196 (ibid., nos. l l l b , 178); Volcmar of Hartmannsberg, who was mentioned between ca. 1165 and ca. 1170 (ibid., nos. 117 and 140); and Conrad of Greimharting, who was mentioned between ca. 1145 and ca. 1196 (ibid., nos. l l l a , 175). This analysis of the witness list in entry 155 in the Traditionsbuch of Herrenchiemsee indicates that the first witness could only have been Siboto V, but it is quite possible that the scribe who entered the notice made an error or that the editors of the Monurnenta Boica transcribed the notice incorrectly. The persistent use of the name Weyam is one piece of evidence that the castle of Neuburg was built only after 1133. See above, Chapter 2, note 38. 'O These surnames were used in the following places: Falkenstein, Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 111, Monurnenta Boica, 2: 279, no. 1 and 3: 10-14, nos. 23 and 33, and Schenkungsbuch Berchtesgaden, 257-258, nos. 33 and 34; Griggingen, Monurnenta Carinthiae, 3: 204-205, no. 508 and Traditionsbucher Gothueig, 311-312, no. 175; and Hemstein, Traditionsbucher GWtweig, 446-448, no. 314.

54

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

Herrand 11, was identified as Herrand of Hernstein in a document involving Styria,l1but as Herrand of Falkenstein in Bavarian entries.'* His widow was called the countess of Hernstein in an entry in the Traditionsbuch of the Austrian monastery of Gottweig.13 Their sons, Siboto and Herrand 111, always used the cognomen Antwort, the name of a village located south of Hartmannsberg.l4Since no other member of the lineage ever employed the surname Antwort, it is clear that this cognomen was reserved for the cadet branch of the family. Siboto's Surnames Siboto IV was designated in the overwhelming number of notices in the Codex Falkensteinensis as Count Siboto, and his various relatives were usually described with or without their first names as his father, uncle, brother, and the like. No further identification was required in what was essentially a private collection of documents. Siboto was likewise merely identified as Count Siboto in one entry in the Traditionsbuch of Tegernsee, the monastery with which his ancestors had been closely associated in the ~ast;" and he was often called only Count Siboto or the church's advocate in the codex of traditions of Herrenchiemsee.16 Stormer's point that prominent members of the high nobility adopted surnames only very slowly is well taken. The count used the surname Falkenstein ten times in the Codex Falkensteinensis (nos. 2, l l l b , 133, 136, 143, 157, 158, 171, 172, 175), Neuburg seven times (nos. 2, 106, 118, 119, 134, 167, 170), Hartmannsberg twice (nos. 2, 183), and Hernstein only once (no. 2). The toponym Hernstein may have appeared only once in the codex because most of the traditions concerned Bavaria rather than Austria, because the count's uncle, brother, nephews, and niece had retained shares of that lordship, and because the codex was compiled by the canons of a Bavarian church. It is hard to detect any pattern in the choice of the surname Falkenstein or Neuburg in a particular entry. The count was called Siboto of Falkenstein in notices

Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 300-302, no. 206b. Codex Falkensternensis, no. l l l a ; and Monurnenta Boica, 2: 307, no. 80 and 315, no. 106. l 3 Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 515-516, no. 381. She was presumably called a countess because her second husband was Count Conrad of Peilstein. l4 On Siboto, see Codex Falkensteinensis, nos. 118, 131, 133-136, and 167; and Monurnenta Boica, 2: 301, no. 63. I could find only one case where Herrand I11 was identified as Herrand of Antwort. Monurnenta Boica, 2: 310, no. 91. This entry is wrongly dated ca. 1140. Notice no. 100 (313), a more complete account of the same transaction, was witnessed by several indviduals, including Conrad of Halfing, who appeared as a witness in the 1170s (Codex Falkensteinensis, nos. 148, 155b). Entries 91 and 100 in the Traditionsbuch of Herrenchiemsee should thus probably be dated around 1175 rather than 1140 and must refer, therefore, to Herrand 111 rather than his father, Herrand 11, who died around 1155. Tyroller, Genealogie, 218, no. 15, cited notice no. 91 under Herrand 11. l5 Traditionen Tegernsee, 270-271, no. 353. l6 Monurnenta Boica, 2: 284-345, nos. 5, 37, 56, 58, 187, and 190. 12

FIRST NAMES AND SURNAMES

55

that concerned his children's marriages (nos. 143, 175), his acquisition of Judith's share of the inheritance, including her rights to Falkenstein (nos. 157, 158, 171, 172), and his final division of the patrimony with Siboto of Antwort, which occurred in Neuburg itself (no. 136). On the other hand, he was identified as Siboto of Neuburg in entries in which he settled his quarrel with his nephew (no. 118), divided his property between his sons (nos. 106, 167), was enfeoffedby Frederick Barbarossa (no. 170), and obtained property and rights in Flintsbach, the village near Falkenstein (no. 134). It is perhaps significant that he called himself Siboto of Neuburg in the one entry written in the first person in which he employed a surname (no. 167) and in the one extant charter he issued.17 While the last two designations may inhcate that Siboto viewed Neuburg as the center of his most important lordship, all four surnames were in the final analysis merely geographical terms. This is made abundantly clear by the list of the count's fiefs in the codex, where he was identified as "Siboto comes de Niwenburch, item de Ualchenstain, itemque de Hademarsberch et de Herrantesteine, filius Rudolfi comitis [no. 21." The canons of Herrenchiemsee referred to the count seven times as Siboto of Neuburg,I8 twice as Siboto of Falkenstein,19and twice as Siboto of HartmannsbergZ0The use of the surname Hartmannsberg in these entries from the Traditionsbuch of Herrenchiemsee can easily be explained. The donor in the first notice (no. 139) was a ministerial of the count named Deinhart or Deigenhart of Hartmannsberg (nos. 120b, 120c); and the castellan of Hartmannsberg was among the witnesses, presumably because Teginhard had been assigned to the garrison of that castle. The second entry (no. 222) involved Conrad of Aschau. Aschau is located only seventeen kilometers from Hartmannsberg, and Herrenchiemsee itself is only ten kilometers from Hartmannsberg. Siboto's wife was listed as Hildegard of Hartmannsberg for similar reasons in the necrology of Baumburg, a house of Augustinian canons situated twenty kilometers to the east of HartmannsbergZ1The other Bavarian monasteries referred to the count as Siboto of N e u b ~ r g while ; ~ ~ he was known as Siboto of Hemstein in the codex of traditions of the Austrian monastery of GottweigZ3

Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang 11, 170-171. Monurnenta Boica, 2: 297-362, nos. 52, 60, 63, 148, 206, and 234; and Salzburger Urkundenbuch 2: 462-465, no. 333. l9 Monurnenta Boica, 2: 303-304, no. 70 and 354, no. 213. 20 Ibid., 325, no. 139 and 358, no. 222. "Necrologium Baumburgense," ed. Sigismund Herzberg-Frankel, MGH Necrologia Germaniae 2 (Berlin, 1890), 240. 22 "Codex traditionum Augiensium," ed. Johann Mayerhofer, Drei bayerische Traditionsbucher aus dern XII. lahrhundert: Festschrift zum 700 jahrigen Iubiliiurn der Wittelsbacher Thronbesteigung (Munich, 1880), 110, no. 111; Freyberg, "Traditions-Codex St. Castulus in Moosburg," 31, no. 89; Monurnenta Boica, 2: 189-190, no. 9; Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 2: 563-564, no. 412 (This involved the collegiate church of St. Zeno in Bad Reichenhall); and Traditionen Schaftlarn, 181-182, no. 182. 23 Traditionsbiicher Gottweig, 534-535, no. 400. " Noichl,

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN The Surnames of Siboto's Sons This same pattern in the use of surnames persisted during the lifetimes of Siboto's sons, Kuno and Siboto V, and grandsons, Siboto VI and Conrad. The Codex Falkensteinensis referred to the count's older son as Kuno of and the chronicler Neuburg (no. 160), while the canons of HerrenchiemseeZ4 who mentioned his participation in the Third Crusadez5called him Kuno of Falkenstein. Kuno's brother was identified as Siboto of Falkenstein (no. 171) and as Siboto of Neuburg (no. 178) in the codex, as Siboto of Neuburg as Siboto of Hartmannsberg in Frauen- and in WeyarnZ6and S~haftlarn,'~ Herrenchiem~ee,~' and as Siboto of Hernstein in the Austrian monasteries of GottweigZ9and Heiligenkreuz30and in the Viennese Stadtrecht of 1221 .31 The Surnames of Siboto's Grandsons Duke Otto I of Meran addressed the sons of Siboto V, Siboto VI and and the Conrad, as the counts of Neuburg3' The Annales S~heftlarienses~~

Monumenta Boica, 2: 335, no. 166. "Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, edita a quodam Austriensi clerico, qui eidem interfuit, nornine Ansbertus," ed. Hippolyt Tauschinski and Mathias Pangerl, Codex Strahoviensis, Fontes rerum Austriacarum, Erste Abteilung 5 (Vienna, 1863), 16. 2h Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3, Nachtrage, 648, no. 733-734. " Traditionen Schaftlarn, 355-356, no. 356. Monumenta Boica, 2: 365, no. 142. According to this entry, which the editors of the Monumenta Boica dated ca. 1130, Count Siboto of Hartmannsberg, his wife Adelaide, and their son Siboto gave Herrenchiemsee whatever property they possessed in Antwort in the presence of Provost Conrad of Herrenchiemsee. The editors obviously assumed that the donors were Count Siboto I1 (d. 1136), his wife Adelaide, and their son Siboto 111. There are two problems with this date. First, the first two provosts of Herrenchiernsee were Hartmann (1125/29-1133) and Kuno (1133-1153) (Weinfurter, Salzburger Bistumsreform, 53). Second, Antwort was the residence of the cadet branch of the Falkenstein lineage in the second half of the twelfth century and could not have been given, therefore, to the canons in the lifetime of Siboto 11, but only after the extinction of the cadet branch in the 1170s. A Conrad was, however, the provost of Herrenchiemsee between about 1204/1207 and 1217 (Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3: 51-52, no. 574 and 213-214, no. 700a). In addition, the only witness in entry 142, Frederick of Stephanskirchen, served as a witness in the 1220s (Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I, 167-169, no. 5). Entry 142 can thus refer only to Siboto V and his wife and son, Siboto VI. Dating this notice between 1204/07 and 1217 provides us with the first name of Siboto V's wife, a daughter of Count Conrad I1 of Valley (Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 175), who had previously been identified as Luitgard on the basis of a statement by the sixteenth-century historian Aventin. Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, p. 32, n. 53; and Von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch, p. 79, n. 13. Tyroller, Genealogie, 220, no. 17, stated that her name was unknown. The other references to Siboto V as Siboto of Hartmannsberg are: Monumenta Boica, 2: 370, no. 254 (this entry is also wrongly dated ca. 1130, but Frederick of Steuhanskirchen who was mentioned above also served as a witness in this entry); < . and ibid., 451, no. 7. 29 Das Saal-Buch des Benedictiner-Stiftes Gottweip mit Erlauterungen und einem divlomatischen Anhange, ed. Wilhelm Karlin, ~ o n t e srerum ~istriacarum,~ G e i t e~ b t h e i l u n i8 (Vienna, 1855), Diplomatischer Anhang, 294-295, no. 29. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger, 1: 92-94, no. 68. '' Ibid., 2, no. 237. 32 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I, 169, no. 6. 3 3 A n n a l e ~et notae Scheftlarienses, ed. Philipp Jaffk MGH Scriptores 17 (Hanover, 1861), 342-343. 24

25

p.

FIRST NAMES AND SURNAMES

57

bishop of F r e i ~ i n greferred ~~ to Siboto VI as Siboto of Neuburg; the bishop of Trent3' and the archbishop of Salzburg in a document involving the called him Siboto of Hartmannsberg; and advocacy of Herren~hiemsee~~ he was identified as Siboto of Hernstein, when his sister manied an Austrian nobleman and received various Austrian properties as her His brother Conrad, the last member of the lineage, was known as both Conrad of Neuburg3' and Conrad of Hart~nannsberg~~ in Chiemsee. Conrad's sale of his Austrian and Bavarian alods to the bishop of Freising aroused considerable controversy. He was called in the sales agreements and in the resulting litigation both Conrad of Neuburg4' and Conrad of Hernstein4' and for good measure in one document, "Chunradus (comes) de Niwenburch siue Herrant~tein."~'Finally, Conrad even used the title "Comes de Valchenstain, ac de Nuvepurch seu Hadmarsperch" in a donation he made to T e g e r n ~ e eAt . ~the ~ same time, the counts' own knights and servile retainers, as was the case with the men of the lords of Seignelay, also employed the surnames Falkenstein, Hartmannsberg, Hernstein, and Neub~rg.~~ This lengthy, and admittedly rather dull, examination of the counts' surnames reveals that they never acquired a generally recognized patronym. The various cognomina they employed were and remained geographical designations that most appropriately identified them in different localities and contexts, for example, Hartmannsberg in Herrenchiemsee and Hernstein in Austria. The only clear exception to this pattern in the choice of surnames occurred in 1260, when Bishop Otto of Passau (1254-1265) reconferred the fiefs near Hernstein and Wiener Neustadt that had escheated to his church after the death of the last member of the dynasty, Conrad, and referred to the late count as the count of Hartmannsberg rather than as the count of H e r n ~ t e i nIt. ~is~a modem scholarly convention that we refer to the descendants of Herrand I as the counts of Falkenstein. That cognomen was only one of seven surnames (Antwort, Falkenstein, Griggingen, Hartmannsberg, Hernstein, Neuburg, and Weyarn) that Herrand's descendants in the male line employed in a period of 160 years. If anything, they preferred the designation Neuburg. The Falkensteins' persistent use of multiple surnames hardly proves that they had developed a clearly defined family identity. Monumenta Wittelsbacensia, 257-258, no. 105.

Ibid., 197-198, no. 82.

36 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3: 611-612, no. 1064.

37 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I, 167-169, no. 5.

38 Monumenta Boica, 2: 398, no. 14.

39 Ibid., 402-403, no. 20; and 456, no. 15.

40 Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, Beilagen, 437-439, no. 2; and 441-443, no. 6.

Ibid., 440, nos. 3 and 4.

42 Ibid., 443-445, no. 7.

43 Monumenta Boica, 6: 215-216, no. 46.

44 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 211-212, 219, 221-222, and 232-234.

45 Monumenta Boica, 29 (Munich, 1831), 167, no. 168.

34

35

VI. THE END OF THE DYNASTY Kuno and Siboto V aught between the growing power of the dukes of Austria and Bavaria, the Falkensteins declined rapidly in the thirteenth century.' Kuno never returned from the Third C r ~ s a d eHis . ~ younger brother, Siboto V, who was approximately forty, married Adelaide, the daughter of Count Conrad I1 of Valley, around 1196,3when the seventyyear-old Siboto IV was conscious of his impending death and the need to continue the lineage.4 The marriage marked the formal reconciliation of the two neighboring comital houses, who had long been at odds (nos. 130, 138). Siboto V was unable to acquire the Modling inheritance after the death of his childless maternal uncle, Count Kuno V, in 1205. Instead, Archbishop Eberhard I1 of Salzburg (1200-1246) took possession of the advocacies of the Augustinian collegiate churches of Au and Gars, which had formed the heart of the Modlings' lordship; while the ministerials of Duke Louis I of Bavaria (1183-1231) asserted their control over the surrounding countryside, the first step in that area's eventual incorporation into the Wittelsbach prin~ipality.~ Siboto V was last mentioned in a datable document sometime between January 1222 and 8 October 1226,6and was clearly dead by 1231.7

C

Siboto VI and Conrad Siboto V's sons, Siboto VI and Conrad, allied with Dukes Otto I (12031234) and Otto I1 (1234-1248) of Andech-Meran against the Wittelsbachs and thus found themselves in the Hohenstaufen camp in the early 1240s since Duke Otto I1 of Bavaria (1231-1253) supported the pope.8 Siboto,

' Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 79;-82*. The author of the "Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris," 16, mentioned Kuno's participation in the Third Crusade. There is no further reference to Kuno after his departure for the Holy Land in May 1189. Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 175. Her name is not given in this document, but see above, note 28, for the reason for identifying her as Adelaide. 'See Codex Falkensteinensis, no. 173, which is dated January 1193, in which Siboto IV raised the possibility that he might die before Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg would cany out the agreement he had made with the count. Flohrschiitz, "Die Vogte von Modling," 138-141. Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I , 167-168, note to no. 5 . Ibid., 169, no. 6. Duke Otto I of Meran addressed this letter to Siboto's sons rather than to Siboto V, presumably because the latter was dead by this date. Ibid.; and Annales Scheftlarienses, 342-343. For further information, see Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 34-47; and Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte Baiems 2 (Gotha, 1880): 84-86. The chronology of events in the early 1240s is obscure.

58

THE END OF THE DYNASTY

59

who had been excommunicated for seizing property that belonged to the was killed in the fighting between the Andechs monastery of Tegern~ee,~ and Wittelsbachs sometime before 1 February 1245, when Eberhard I1 enfeoffed the Bavarian duke with the advocacy of Herrenchiemsee, which had escheated to the archbishop after Siboto's death.'' Otto 11's enfeoffment with the advocacy may have been part of the archbishop's successful campaign to win the Bavarian duke to the imperial side." Eberhard was able to ignore Conrad's rights to the vacant advocacy because Duke Otto had captured Conrad in his war against the house of Andech-Meran and had placed the last of the Falkensteins in the custody of Count Conrad of Wasserburg, who treacherously seized, according to the Annales Scheftlarienses, Conrad of Neuburg's castles.12 Conrad soon released his prisoner, probably after the count of Wasserburg broke with his cousin, Duke Otto of Bavaria,13 over the latter's abandonment of the papal cause.14It is not known whether Conrad of Wasserburg also returned Conrad of Neuburg's castles at the same time.15 It is possible that Conrad of Wasserburg and the papal nuncio, Albert Behaim, who had found refuge in Wasserburg after he returned from the Council of Lyons,16hoped that Conrad's release would induce him to follow the example of his erstwhile ally, Duke Otto I1 of Andech-Meran, who had changed allegiances in the papal-imperial battle in a vain attempt to salvage his position in Bavaria.I7 Conrad of Neuburg does appear in fact to have joined the papal party in Bavaria. He surrendered on 31 August 1245 his proprietary rights to his alods situated in Austria and Bavaria to Bishop Conrad I of Freising (1230-1258), who had abandoned the imperial cause at the Council of Lyons in July and who was soon at war with Duke Otto of Bavaria.'' The

Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, p. 80*, n. 35. The Annales Scheftlarienses, 342-343, placed Siboto VI's death in 1246, but that date is clearly wrong since Archbishop Eberhard referred to Siboto's death when he conferred the advocacy to Duke Otto on February 1, 1245. Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 3: 611-612, no. 1064. l 1 Christine Stollinger, "Erzbischof Eberhard 11. von Salzburg (1200-1246)" (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1972), 55-64 and 119-120. l2 Annales Scheftlarienses, 342-343. l 3 The mother of Conrad of Wasserburg was the duke's paternal aunt. Spindler, Handbuch, 2, Tafel I. l 4 Ibid., 2: 42. " Noichl, Codex Falkensteinens~s,81.-82*, says that Conrad of Wasserburg did not return the castles and that Conrad of Neuburg tried for this reason to obtain the assistance of Bishop Conrad of Freising by surrendering his alods to the bishop. According to Noichl, Conrad regained the castles only after Duke Otto expelled Conrad of Wasserburg from Bavaria in 1247. This interpretation assumes that Conrad of Neuburg remained on the imperial side. The problem is that Bishop Conrad, like Conrad of Wasserburg, was by 1245 in the papal camp. Noichl's interpretation of the available facts may be correct, but it is also possible that the return of the castles to Conrad of Neuburg was part of the price the papal party paid for the change in his allegiances. '' G. Ratzinger, Forschungenzur bayr~schenGeschichte(Kempten, 1898), 169-170; and Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 42. l 7 Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 44-45. l8 Ratzinger, Forschungen, 180; and Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 42. lo

60

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

count retained the lifelong usufruct of the properties. His men were granted the rights of the ministerials of the church of Freising, but were to serve him in his lifetime. It was specifically stipulated that if Conrad married a noblewoman and sired a legitimate son, he was to confirm the count's grant.19 While the latter provision suggests that Conrad, like Wolfker of Falkenstein, may have fathered a bastard or two or may even have been married to a woman of non-noble status, it is clear that the count did not have a legitimate, male heir of noble status in 1245. The terms of Conrad's tradition were clarified in a second agreement which he made with the bishop in Vienna on 31 December 1246. This contract emphasized that any legitimate and noble-born sons whom Conrad might beget in the future were to enjoy the usufruct of the properties that Conrad had given to Freising as long as they did not claim any additional rights to the lands. If they asserted such claims, they were to lose the income from the domains as well as the other fiefs that the count held from the church of Freising. In addition, this second revised agreement indicated that Conrad had in fact sold his rights to the bishop.'O An accounting that the bishop made with Conrad in 1254 reveals that the price of the alods had been 6255, 600 of which had already been paid by 1254 to the count." Conrad was eventually reconciled with Duke Otto of Bavaria, who had died excommunicate in 1253, and/or with Otto's sons. A document that Noichl dates around 1257/58" indicates that the Wittelsbachs had returned the advocacy of Herrenchiemsee to Conrad, but he styled himself in the same charter as the former count of NeuburgZ3Noichl believes that the childless Conrad, who had still called himself a count by the grace of God in a charter issued in 1257,24had subsequently renounced his comital rights in favor of Duke Louis I1 of Bavaria (1253-1294).25 Conrad was dead by 30 October 1260, when Bishop Otto of Passau regranted the fiefs near Hernstein and Wiener Neustadt that had escheated to the church of Passau after Conrad's death.26 The Disposition of the Falkenstein Inheritance The Wittelsbachs acquired the Falkensteins' Bavarian lordship. On 21 April 1263, Bishop Egno of Trent (1249-1273) enfeoffedDuke Louis with all the fiefs that had escheated to the church of Trent after the death of Siboto VLZ7The brothers, Rahewin and Ruotland of Falkenstein, presuml9

Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hemstein, Beilagen, 437-439, no. 2a.

'' Ibid., no. 2b.

Ibid., 440, no. 3.

Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 81;.

23 Monumenta Boica, 2: 398, no. 14.

24 Ibid., 402-403, no. 20.

25 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 81:.

2 6 M ~ n u m e n tBaoica, 29: 167, no. 168.

"Monumenta Wittelsbacensia, 197-198, no. 82.

21 22

THE END OF THE DYNASTY

61

ably members of the castle's garrison, were listed among the ducal ministerial~on 7 February 1272." In the Second Treaty of Erharting of 18 July 1275, Archbishop Frederick I1 (1270-1284) enfeoffed Duke Henry of Bavaria (1253-1290) and his heirs with the advocacy of the properties of the Salzburg cathedral chapter situated in the Chiemgau, which Siboto Bishop Conrad I1 of Freising (1258-1279) conferred IV had once pos~essed.'~ to his kinsman, Duke Louis, on 11 October 1272, all the fiefs that had escheated to his church after the deaths of Counts Siboto and Conrad of Neuburg30 On 15 July 1277, the bishop also granted the lordship of Hernstein to the duke and his male heirs as a fief to be held in perpetuity.31 The last action was a final vain attempt by Bishop Conrad I1 to enlist the help of Duke Louis in asserting Freising's rights to Hernstein. Siboto VI's and Conrad's sister Adelaide had first been briefly married to an Austrian nobleman, Berthold of Potten~tein,~' and had then married the most powerful ministerial of the duke of Austria, Henry of K ~ e n r i n g . ~ ~ Upon marrying a ministerial, Adelaide had been required to renounce any claims to the alods that she might otherwise have inherited from her father or mother.34Adelaide's and Henry's daughter Euphemia, the sole heiress to the Kuenring fortune and the wife of another Austrian ministerial, Rudolph of Pottendorf, seized Hernstein after her uncle Conrad's death. Although Count Henry of Hardeck, the Landrichter of Austria, whom King Ottokar I1 of Bohemia had ordered to investigate the bishop's corn plaint^,^^ had ruled in the bishop's favor on 21 March 1267,36the Pottendorfs retained possession of Hernstein until they sold the lordship to the duke of Austria in 1380.37Freising's legal rights to Hernstein were indisputable, but Ottokar, and later the Habsburgs, obviously preferred ducal rninisterials rather than the bishop of Freising, let alone the duke of Bavaria, as the owners of an important lordship located southwest of Vienna.38

28 Ibid., 244-251, no. 102. An agreement made in 1287 indcates that Falkenstein was in the Wittelsbachs' possession in that year. Ibid., 409-413, no. 167. 29 Salzburger Urkundenbuch, 4: 87-91, no. 84, clause 3. 'O Monuments Wittelsbacensia, 257-258, no. 105. 3 1 Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, Beilagen, 446, no. 9 . 32 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, Anhang I, 167-169, no. 5 . " Gottfried Edmund Friess, " B e Herren von Kuenring," Blatter des Vereines fur Landeskunde von Niederosterreich, n.s. 7 (1873): 145-151; and Lechner, Die Babenberger, 275-276. Adelaide was identified as the mother of Euphemia of Pottendorf in Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hemstein, Beilagen, 441-443, no. 6. Euphemia of Kuenring was identified as the wife of Rudolph of Pottendorf in Das "Stiftungen-Buch" des Cistercienser-Klosters Zwetl, ed. Johann von Frast, Fontes rerum Austriacarum, Zweite Abtheilung 3 (Vienna, 1851), 136-137. 34 Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein, Beilagen, 441-443, no. 6. 35 Ibid., 441, no. 5 . 36 Ibid., 443-445, no. 7. 37 Ibid., 49. One final point in the history of the Falkensteins needs to be clarified. According to the sixteenth-century historian, Wigulaus Hund, Bayrisch Stammenbuch, 2 vols. (Ingolstadt, 15851586), 1: 51, Siboto VI had a son, Siboto VII, who was murdered while taking a bath in 1272 in Neuburg by his ministerial Otto of Brannenburg. Von Dungem, Genealogisches Handbuch, 80, no. 24; Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 45; and Von Zahn, Geschichte von Hernstein,

62

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN The Causes of the Falkensteins' Decline

The precipitous decline in the Falkensteins' fortunes in the thirteenth century requires an explanation. It is possible that our picture of Siboto IV's sons and grandsons is a false one caused by a lack of documentation. If the German text of the Codex Falkensteinensis had survived, if the archives of Weyarn had not burned in 1236 and 1350,39and/or if the codex of traditions of Herrenchiemsee had been continued after the establishment of the bishopric of Chiemsee in 1215, the contrast between Siboto IV and the last two generations of the dynasty might be less stark. Nevertheless, the overall impression of a noble house struggling for survival and in the end succumbing is undoubtedly a correct one. As the case of the Modlings shows, the Falkensteins were not the only noble family who died out in the thirteenth century and whose lordship was acquired by the Wittelsbachs. Abbot Hermann of Niederalteich (12421273, d. 1275) listed in the Annales et historiae Altahenses forty-one important Bavarian noblemen who died without heirs and whose domains were acquired by Dukes Louis I and Otto II.40In addition to the Modlings and Falkensteins, the Andech-Merans, Bogens, and Wasserburgs were exting~ished.~' Siboto VI's and Conrad's alliance with the Andech-Merans against Otto I1 was a last futile attempt to stop the Wittelsbachs. The situation was not very different in the other southeastern German territories. The margraves of Styna forced various nobles in the mid-twelfth century to become their ministerials and even exterminated some of their rivals.42Only three families of noble rank were still in existence in Styria in 1300.43Similarly, the counts of Schaunberg were the only surviving, Upper Austrian dynastic family of noble ancestry in the later Middle Ages.44 The last noble family in the principality of Salzburg, the Walchens, entered

46, identified Siboto VII as the last member of the dynasty. Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 81*; and Tyroller, Genealogie, 221, no. 22, felt that Conrad was the last Falkenstein. Archbishop Eberhard's enfeoffment of Duke Otto with the advocacy of Herrenchiemsee, Conrad's sale of his alods to the bishop of Freising, and the final disposition of the Falkensteins' lordships in the 1260s suggest that Siboto VII was a figment of Hund's imagination since it is hard to see how Siboto VII's rights could have been so completely ignored in these transactions. 39 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 39:. "Annales et historiae Altahenses, ed. Philipp Jaffi: MGH Scriptores 17 (Hanover, 1861), 377-378. Spindler, Handbuch, 2: 42-47. 4 2 Heinz Dopsch, "Die steirischen Otakare," 117; idem, "Ministerialitat und Herrenstand in der Steiermark und in Salzburg," Zeitschrift des historischen Vereines fur Steiermark 62 (1971): 15-21; and idem, "Probleme standischer Wandlung beim Adel ~sterreichs,der Steiermark und Salzburgs vomehrnlich irn 13. Jahrhundert," in Herrschaft und Stand: Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte im 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Josef Fleckenstein, Veroffentlichungen des MaxPlanck-Instituts fiir Geschichte 51 (Gottingen, 1977), 215-216. 43 Dopsch, "Ministerialitat und Herrenstand," 23. 44 Dopsch, "Probleme standischer Wandlung," 212-214; and Peter Feldbauer, Der Herrenstand in Oberosterreich: Urspriinge, Anfange, Fruhformen, Sozial- und wirtschaftshistorische Studien (Munich, 1972), 123-128 and 175-177.

THE END OF THE DYNASTY

63

the archiepiscopal ministerialage in the mid-thirteenth century.45The mediatization or extinction of the old nobility enabled the archbishops of Salzburg and the dukes of Austria, Bavaria, and Styria to create strong principalities in the high Middle Ages. The Codex Falkensteinensis presents in fact a misleading picture of Siboto IV's true position. The long list of fiefs and alods in the codex suggests that he was a powerful and rich man. Noichl states, for instance, that the Falkensteins reached the height of their prestige and wealth under Siboto IV;46but the preparation of the codex, a weapon usually used by ecclesiastical foundations to protect their holdings from rapacious noblemen, was a sign of weakness rather than strength. Siboto IV was afraid that, if he died in Italy, the ministerials of the duke of Austria would seek to be enfeoffed with the fiefs the Falkensteins held from the bishop of Passau and the count of Burghausen. To prevent the loss of these fiefs, Siboto instructed Kuno of Modling to make certain that Kuno and Siboto V were enfeoffed as quickly as possible with these Austrian holdings (no. 2). The count was not needlessly apprehensive. As the Wittelsbachs' and Habsburgs' respective acquisitions of Modling and Hemstein show, a ministerial's enfeoffment with a lordship was often merely a preliminary step in the lordship's ultimate incorporation into a principality. Moreover, Siboto's enfeoffment by the count of Burghausen, as well as by the counts of Sulzbach, Wasserburg, Schallaburg, Peilstein, and Andech (no. 2), was a gross violation of the so-called Heerschildordnung (clipeus militaris), which prohibited a man from receiving a fief from a peer without the prohibition losing his rank in the shield of k n i g h t h ~ o d Although .~~ was largely theoretical, it is noteworthy that when Siboto himself granted Margrave Engelbert I11 of Kraiburg the advocacy over Herrenchiemsee's property in the Grassauertal and in the Leukental, two of Engelbert's ministerials paid homage to Siboto on the margrave's behalf (no. 133). In other words, the numerous fiefs that Siboto listed in the codex are an indication of his subordinate position within the Bavarian feudal hierarchy rather than of his wealth and power. It is thus not very surprising that Siboto's grandsons were crushed when the Wittelsbachs set out to consolidate their position by eliminating the few remaining noble families in Bavaria. The Causes of Family Extinction Still, Abbot Hermann of Niederalteich was surprised that so many noble families should have died out without an heir in so short a period of time. 45 Dopsch, "Ministerialitat und Herrenstand," 13-15; and Friedrich Fickmayer, "Die Familie derer von Walchen im Pinzgau," Mittheilungen der Gesellschaft fur Salzburger Landeskunde 31 (1891): 313-361. 46 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 82;. "For further information, see Julius Ficker, Vom Heerschilde: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte (Innsbmck, 1862).

64

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

Modem scholars have offered a number of explanations for the rapid extinction of the old nobility in the high Middle Ages. In a classic study written in 1910, Aloys Schulte pointed to the connection between clerical celibacy and the extinction of noble families.48He cited numerous cases where the last male representative of a noble family who might otherwise have continued the lineage was a cleric or where a noble family was only saved from extinction because a cleric who had not taken major orders had married and had sired children. Schulte demonstrated that there was an inverse correlation between familial wealth and the use of religious asylums for younger sons: princely houses were less inclined to dedicate their sons to divine service than lineages of comital rank, who were in turn less apt to do so than untitled noblemen. In other words, it was the poorest noble families, those who could not provide for their younger sons out of their own domains without dangerously subdividing their possessions, who ran the greatest risk of family extinction by placing their cadets in monasteries and collegiate churches. While Schulte's observations are certainly correct, they do not apply to the Falkensteins. It was long believed that Abbot Rupert of Tegernsee (1155-1183, d. 1186) and his brother, Provost Otto of Rottenbuch (11451179), were the brothers of Siboto IV; but this identification has been d i ~ p r o v e nThere . ~ ~ is in fact no evidence that any member of the Falkenstein family, except for Rudolph who died as a monk in Seeon, took holy orders in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Since a Falkenstein would almost certainly have become a bishop or abbot, unless he was grossly incompetent and possibly even if he was, and since a high ecclesiastical dignitary would almost certainly have been mentioned in the Codex Falkensteinensis or in the otherwise abundant documentation that survives from the various Bavarian bishoprics and monasteries, it is highly unlikely that any clerical members of the lineage would have escaped our attention. Clerical celibacy must be ruled out as a specific cause of the Falkensteins' extinction. Stormer has attributed the extinction of the German nobility to the nobles' violent life style in general and to warfare in particular. Many nobles were killed on imperial campaigns and crusades or in private feuds; and their prolonged absences, even if they returned alive, reduced their Violence certainly took its toll opportunities to sire legitimate ~hildren.~' among the Falkensteins. Herrand I probably &ed on the expedition that Duke Welf led to the Holy Land in 1101; Kuno never returned from the Third Crusade; and Siboto VI was killed in the war between the Andech-

Aloys Schulte, Der Adel und die deutsche Kirche im Mittelalter: Studien zur Sozial-, Rechtsund Kirchengeschichte, 2d ed. (1922; reprint ed., Darmstadt, 1958), 261-294. 49 Noichl, Codex Falkensteinensis, 77*-79*; and Franz Tyroller, "Abstammung und Verwandschaft des Abtes Rupert I. von Tegernsee (+1186)," Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige 65 (1953/1954): 116-145. Stormer, Fruher Adel, 86-87. On the role of violence in decimating the ranks of the Saxon aristocracy in the tenth century, see Leyser, Rule and Conflict, 56-58.

THE END OF THE DYNASTY

65

Merans and the Wittelsbachs. It is possible that Siboto 111, who predeceased his father, was killed in a battle in the closing phases of the Investiture Conflict and that Herrand 11, who died around 1155, perished on Frederick Barbarossa's first Italian campaign. Siboto IV was afraid and with good reason that he might not return from the emperor's fourth expedition to Italy, which proved fatal to many German noblemen, including Archbishop Rainald of Cologne, Duke Frederick of Swabia, and Welf VII. Nevertheless, violence by itself is not a sufficient explanation for why so many noble lineages were extinguished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. While no doubt some families were eliminated when their sole heir died on a campaign or in a private feud, a violent death was only able to have such disastrous consequences because the lineage's hope for survival already rested on a single, childless heir. Early marriages and a high birth rate were the obvious ways to compensate for the endemic societal disorder. The Falkensteins adopted the opposite family strategy: the eldest son married late; younger sons did not normally marry at all; and there were few children. Rudolph, who had been in Rome with his father in 1099, married around 1125; Kuno, who was already alive around 1155, was a bachelor when he left on the Third Crusade at the age of thirty-five; and there is no evidence that Siboto VI, whose parents had married around 1196, was married when he died in 1244. The exceptions to this pattern of late marriages were Siboto IV and his brother Herrand 11, both of whom were already fathers in the mid-1 150s; but they had been orphaned at an early age and were thus in full possession of their lands as young men. Siboto's problems with his nephews and niece may have caused him to discourage the early marriages of his own sons. Most of the younger sons or their descendants (Reginold, Wolfker, Siboto of Antwort, and Herrand 111) never married or did not marry noble women. The forty-year-old Siboto V married only when it became clear that his older brother would never return from the Third Crusade and that he alone could continue the lineage. Conrad, the last member of the dynasty, who was married in 1257,51was still unmarried, when he sold his property to the bishop of Freising in 1245 even though he could easily have been in his midforties. The Falkensteins' behavior was by no means unique. A similar pattern of late marriages and few children is dscemable among the ministerials of the archbishops of Salzburg in the high Middle Ages.52Heath Dillard concluded that over 60 percent of the men in Castille during the Reconquista

'' Monumenta Boica,

2: 402-403, no. 20.

''John 8.Freed, "Diemut von Hogl: Eine Salzburger Erbtochter und die Entwicklung der erzbischofliche Ministerialitat im zwolften Jahrhundert," Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fur Salzburger Landeskunde 120/121 (1980/1981), 654-655; and my forthcoming article in the same journal, "Die Salzburger Ministerialitat: Genealogische Studien."

66

FREED: THE COUNTS OF FALKENSTEIN

never married.53Duby has determined that there was a generational gap of approximately thirty years between a father and his eldest son among the nobles of northwestern France in the twelfth century.54It was these unmarried men, the so-called juvenes, who went on crusades and participated in tournaments and who were the carriers of chivalric culture and the chief troublemakers in medieval society.55 Indeed, it is worth observing that the same family strategy and behavior can be detected in the Hohenstaufen dynasty itself. Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of Burgundy had at least eleven children, eight sons and three daughters. All the daughters and three of the sons died as children. The twenty-four-year-old Duke Frederick VI of Swabia died unmarried at the siege of Acre. Otto inherited the county of Burgundy from his mother; it passed through his daughter to the house of Andech-Meran. The unmarried Conrad was in his early twenties when an irate husband killed Conrad for trying to seduce the man's wife. The youngest son, Philip of Swabia, had already been elected bishop of Wiirzburg, when it was decided that he should pursue a secular career. He had four daughters. Henry VI, who in fact continued the Hohenstaufen lineage in the male line, married an heiress, Constance of Sicily, who was his senior by eleven years. Their only child, the future Emperor Frederick 11, was born when his mother was forty. In other words, Frederick Barbarossa had five adult sons, but only a single grandson whose birth had been a minor miracle.56 It was the combination of late marriages and a violent life style that threatened the survival of the nobility in the high Middle Ages. In the final analysis, the change in the structure of the nobility was the chief cause of the extinction of many noble lineages in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The emphasis on patrilineal descent and the attempt to preserve the family patrimony intact meant that younger sons were either placed in the church or were not permitted to many and/or sire legitimate children if they remained laymen and received a share of the patrimony. Since a man normally established his own household when he married,57even the marriage of the eldest son was postponed as long as possible to prevent a division of the family fortune between the father and his heir. This policy set fathers against their sons and paternal uncles against their nephews,58 and the bored young men escaped from home by wiling their time away on dangerous adventures. Excessive interbreeding,

53 Heath Dillard, "Women in Reconquest Castile: The Fueros of Sepdveda and Cuenca," in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 73. 54 Georges Duby, "Youth in aristocraticsociety: Northwestern France in the twelfth century," The Chivalrous Society, 116. 55 Ibid., 112-122; and idem, Medieval Marriage, 11-12. 5 6 Hansmartin Decker-Hauff,"Das Staufische Haus," Die Zeit der Staufer: Geschichte-KunstKultur 3 (Stuttgart, 1977), 354-362. 57 Duby, "Youth in aristocratic society," 118. 5 8 Jane K. Beitscher, " 'As the twig is bent . . .': Children and their parents in an aristocratic society," journal of Medieval History 2 (1976): 181-191.

THE END OF THE DYNASTY

67

such as Rudolph's and Gertrude's consanguineous marriage, within a limited group of lineages who were deemed socially acceptable may also have had disastrous genetic consequences. In other words, as the case of the Falkensteins demonstrates, it was the change in the nobility's own selfperception that was the chief cause of its destruction. The decline in the power of the German monarchy and the formation of the territorial principalities are inseparable from the division of the great noble sips of the early Ottonian period into separate lineages and the eventual extinction of most of the dynasties. The survivors were the ancestors of the great princely houses who ruled Germany until 1918.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

would like to thank Illinois State University for providing me with a number of research grants to finance my investigations and the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Munich for permission to reproduce the Falkenstein family portrait. I wish also to thank my colleagues, Professors Roy Austensen and Lawrence Walker, who read earlier drafts of this monograph and whose criticisms helped to make a complicated subject slightly more comprehensible. I am particularly indebted to Professor Heinz Dopsch of the University of Salzburg, the foremost authority today on the history of medieval Salzburg, who has always been more than willing to answer my questions and to provide me with assistance. I owe a special word of thanks to Professor-Emeritus Joseph R. Strayer of Princeton University for his sage advice. Finally, I must thank my wife, Susan, who has learned to live with me when I am lost in the thickets of medieval genealogies.

INDEX

Adelaide (wife of Siboto 11), 16,20-22,31, Elizabeth (wife of Conrad of Falkenstein), 17,

32,37,40

63

Adelaide of Falkenstein (wife of Berthold of Engelschalk of Wasen (noble), 17,29,44 Pottenstein, Henry of Kuenring), 17,59 Euphemia of Kuenring (wife of Rudolph of Adelaide of Falkenstein (wife of Poto of PotPottendorf), 17,59 tenstein), 16,25,28,49 Adelaide of Valley (wife of Siboto V), 17, Falkenstein (castle), 8,11, 26,41,46,51-54, 54n,28,56 Admont (Benedictines), 28 Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg, 17,29,34,46 Albero Wolf V of Bocksberg, 17,46 Andech-Merans, 19,56,57,60 Antwort, 52,55 Aribonen, 6-7 Au (Augustinians), 9,56 Augustinian canons, 21 autogenous regalian rights, 22,23,26

58

Falkensteins (lineage): comital dignity, 27,28; extinction, 56-62;family consciousness, 41, 42,46,49;family portrait, 11,18,44;geHantgemaL34nealogy, 12,22-30,31-42; 40;marriages, 63;names, 8,41,43,49-55 familia, 2,48 first names, 2,7-9,41,49,50 Frauenchiemsee (Benedictines), 54 Frederick 11, archbishop of Salzburg, 59 Freising (bishopric), 19,21,36,57-59 Friderun (sister of Siboto 11), 15,16

bastards, 20,21,28,49,50,58 Baumburg (Augustinians), 19,20-22,27,53 Bavaria, 6-9,19,22,60,61 Gars (Augustinians), 9,56 Berchtesgaden (Augustinians), 21 Berengar I1 of Sulzbach (count), 20,22,32, Geislbach (site of Falkensteins' Hantgemal),

37

34-37,39,40

Berthold of Mormoosen (ministerial), 16,20, Gerold (maternal grandfather of Gertrude of Weyam?), 16,22,24,31-33,36,37,40 50 Gertrude of Weyam (wife of Rudolph of FalBerthold of Pottenstein (noble), 17,59 kenstein), 14,16,20,23,24,26,27,31Bloch, Marc, 3,4 33,36,37,40,41 Bosl, Karl, 7,19 Bouchard, Constance B., 3n. 3,4n. 11,33, Gottweig (Benedictines), 25,27,45,52-54 Griggingen, 25,25-6 n. 56,41,51,55 50 Bruckbergs (nobles), 33-36,40 Habsburgs, 2,9,59,61 Hantgemal, 34-40 Hartmannsberg (castle), 11, 12,51-55 11,12,59 Codex Falkensteinensis, 11-13,34,52-54,56, Haunsbergs (nobles), 33-36,40 Heck, Philipp, 37,38 60,61 Conrad I, archbishop of Salzburg, 14,21,22, Heiligenkreuz (Cistercians), 54 Helica of Pottenstein, 281-1. 64 27 Henry XIII, duke of Bavaria, 59 Conrad I, bishop of Freising, 57,58 Henry 11, emperor, 22,24 Conrad 11, bishop of Freising, 59 Conrad of Falkenstein (count), 17,49, 54- Henry of Kuenring (ministerial), 17,59 Herlihy, David, 41 60,63 Conrad I1 of Peilstein (count), 29,30,44,46 Hermann, abbot of Niederalteich, 60,61 Hemstein (castle), 8,11,22,23,41,44-46, Conrad of Raitenbuch (ministerial), 17,46 51-55,59 Conrad I1 of Valley (count), 49,541-1. 28,56 Herrand I11 of Antwort (noble), 17,29,34, Conrad of Wasserburg (count), 57 44-46,52,63 crusades, 24,46,56,62 Herrand I of Falkenstein (noble), 16,22-26, Chiemgau (advocacy of Salzburg's property),

Dilching, 15 Dillard, Heath, 63,64 Duby, Georges, 3-5,11,33,43,64 Dungem, Otto Freiherr von, 25,36,37 dynistic monasteries (Hauskloster), 3,7,39 Eberhard 11, archbishop of Salzburg, 35,56,

57 Egno, bishop of Trent, 55,58

31,40,51,62 Herrand I1 of Falkenstein (noble), 16,28,29,

32,34,41,44,45,52,63 Herrand of Pottenstein (noble), 16, 28, 47,

.

A Q,

H ~ ~ ~of~wolfgerstein , - J (noble), 2gn.64 Herrenchiemsee (Augustinians), 11,12,19-

22,24,45,52-55,57,58,60 Hildegard of Modling (wife of Siboto IV), 16,

18,29,31,32,43,44,53

70

INDEX

Hohenstaufen, 64

Hugo (husband of Fridemn), 15, 16

Investiture Conflict, 6, 7, 9-11, 19, 22, 63 Judith of Falkenstein (wife of Nizo of Raitenbuch, Albero Wolf IV of Bocksberg), 17, 29, 34, 44, 46, 48

Rudolph of Falkenstein (count), 14, 16, 20, 22-28, 31-33, 36, 37, 44, 47, 63 Rudolph of Pottendorf (ministerial), 17, 59 Rudolph of Pottenstein (noble), 16, 28, 47, 49 Rupert, abbot of Tegemsee, 62

Schaftlam (canons), 54 Schmid, Karl, 1-11, 38-40, 5 1 Schulte, Aloys, 62 Kunigunde of Pottenstein (nun), 16, 28 Seeon (Benedictines), 19, 22, 27, 29 Kuno of Falkenstein (noble), 12, 17, 18, 29, Siboto of Antwort (noble), 17, 29, 34,44-46, 31, 32, 43-46, 49, 54, 56, 61-63 52, 63 Kuno IV of Modling (count), 9, 12, 29, 34, Siboto IV of Falkenstein: brother, 29, 31, 34, 43, 49, 50, 61 63; compilation of Codex Falkensfeinensis, Kuno V of Modling (count), 43, 48, 56 11-13; daughters of, 17, 29,31, 43,44, 47; Kuno VI of Modling (count), 43 family strategy, 43-48; first reference, 14; knowledge of ancestry, 31-42; maternal Lambert of Wattrelos (canon), 3 1 ancestors, 14-22; nephews and niece, 29, Lazams of Hemstein-Wolfratshausen (min31, 34, 44-47; parents' mamage, 14, 26isterial), 16, 28, 50 28, 33,41, 64, 65; participation in Frederick leading names (Leitnamen), 2, 6, 9, 41, 49, Barbarossa's Italian campaign, 11, 12, 31, 50 34, 63; patemal ancestors, 22-26; patemal Leyser, Karl, 5, 6 uncles, 28, 31, 44, 45, 47; sumames, 52, Lex Baiuvariorurn, 6, 8 53; weakness, 61; wife, 29, 43 Libri memoriales, 1, 3, 5, 6 Siboto V of Falkenstein (count), 12, 17, 18, Lippelt, Helmut, 3 29, 31, 32, 35, 44-46, 49, 54, 56, 61, 63 Liutgard (wife of Siboto I), 15, 16, 3 1 Siboto VI of Falkenstein (count), 17, 49, 54Louis 11, duke of Bavaria, 58, 59 57, 59, 60, 62, 63 Siboto VII of Falkenstein (count), 59-60n. 38 Miconnais, 3-7, 43

Siboto of Mormoosen (ministerial), 16, 50 ministerials, 8, 10, 20, 28, 56, 59-61

Siboto I of Weyam (count?), 15, 16, 19, 22Mitterauer, Michael, 23

24, 26, 32, 33, 37, 40, 51 Modlings (counts), 8, 9, 43, 56, 60, 61

Siboto I1 of Weyam (count), 14-16, 19-22, 24, 31-33, 36, 37, 40, 49, 51 Siboto 111 of Weyam (count?), 14, 16, 20, 24, Neuburg (castle), 11, 12, 21, 22, 51-55, 58 26f 63 Nizo of Raitenbuch (ministerial), 17, 29, 46; Sophia of Vohburg (wife of Herrand I1 of daughter, 17, 46 Falkenstein and Conrad 11of Peilstein), 16, nobility: causes of extinction, 60-65; defini44-46 tion, 4; formation of patrilineal lineages, 62 1-5, 7-11, 31, 36, 39-43, 46, 49, 64, 65; Swabial self-perception, 1, 5, 7-9, 33; sips, 1-2, 6surnames, 2, 5, 7-9, 41, 50-55 8, 36, 38-40 Noichl, Elisabeth, 12, 13, 23-26, 37, 58, 61 Tegemsee (Benedictines), 15, 19, 22-24, 26, 27, 32, 40, 41, 51, 52, 57 Otto, bishop of Passau, 55, 58 Tradifionsbiicher, 12 Otto I, duke of Andech-Meran, 54, 56 Tyroller, Franz, 19, 20, 37 Otto 11, duke of Andech-Meran, 56, 57 Otto 11, duke of Bavaria, 56-58 Otto, provost of Rottenbuch, 62 uncles, 47 Otto of Hemstein (ministerial), 16, 28, 50 Welfs, 7-9, 38-40 Patto of Dilching (noble), 14-16, 22-24, 26, Weyam (castle and lordship): 8, 14, 21, 23, 31, 32, 37, 40, 41 26, 33, 36, 40; monastery, 11, 14, 15, 19, Petersberg (Benedictines), 11 21, 27, 39, 40, 54, 60 Poto of Pottenstein (noble), 16, 28 Weyams (lineage), 14-23, 26, 40, 41, 51 Pottendorfs (ministerials), 59 Wittelsbachs, 8, 9, 22, 56-61 Prinz, Friedrich, 6, 7, 9 Wolfker of Falkenstein (noble), 16, 19, 20, 24-26, 28, 32, 44-47, 50, 63 Reginold of Falkenstein (noble), 16, 25, 26, 28, 47, 63 Zahn, Josef von, 23 291

St6rmerl

301

Wilhelml

7-91

411